I Am the One
by theonewhowaited
Summary: Jeff is in a car accident, and now Nick thinks he's seeing things. What's going on?
1. Flashback

**Disclaimer: **I do not own the characters of Jeff or Nick, Glee, Dalton, or _Next to Normal_, which the general premise is based off of.

**A/N:** My first fanfic EVER. Yay. Gonna pull the "please don't hate me, it's gets better!" line. Leave a review if you want to join my list of favorite people ever. If you really feel so inclined, go listen to "I Am the One (Reprise)" from N2N, which was the general idea behind the story.

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><p><em>It was 9:46 the night that it happened—that is to say, at 9:46pm, the fight happened.<em>

_It certainly wasn't, by any means, the biggest fight Jeff and I had ever had. In fact, we'd gotten in worse—fist-fights, even—in the earlier days of our friendship. Jeff would usually have been the one tomake some sort of snarky comment about my overachieving study habits, and my comebacks would always sound eerily similar to "Well, if you hadn't spent so much time in the mirror admiring your hair yesterday afternoon" in some way, shape, or form._

_This wasn't, however, one of _those_ fights. Well, not really._

_It was the night of the Winter Formal, held at the ceremony hall at the largest—well, only—hotel in town, which was the only venue big enough to fit the vast majority of the Dalton student body and their dates. _

_Surprisingly enough, I had taken the initiative and formed an elaborate scheme, including a whole lot of balloons, a fake snowman, and a very large box of packing peanuts, to ask a girl named Amy to the dance. I had liked her for a few months; truth be told, she was kind of out of my league in terms of the social status, so I was thrilled when she had said yes. Jeff had, naturally, eschewed all formalities and, almost as a second thought, asked some random girl, essentially, to the dance. He claimed to have known her from some kind of musical exchange program the Warblers had done with our sister school, but I wasn't sure I believed him. I hadn't even been there when he'd asked her._

_The evening appeared to start out normally enough, what with dinner at one of the nicer restaurants in town. Amy and I had taken pictures at my house before we left to meet up with Jeff and his date, because, as always, Jeff was running a little bit behind due to an unforeseen hair emergency. We'd decided to drive to the dance in separate cars so that, in the off chance that I wanted to leave early (hey, I had a big test in Calculus that following Tuesday after the extended weekend!), I could, even though I'd told Amy that I wouldn't want to; she had assured me that she could find a ride if necessary. _

_By my own rough estimates, we'd been at the dance for about an hour. I'd just made it back onto the dance floor when I realized that Amy was no longer dancing with Jeff and his date, waiting for my return so we could dance together again. In a lack of foresight, I'd left my tux jacket on when we arrived and started with the dancing, even though Jeff had suggested I take it off. I should have listening, considering that he, of all people, should know how hot it can get when you're dancing._

"_Where's Amy?" I asked Jeff, half-yelling over the pounding Katy Perry track that was being blasted through the speakers by whatever mediocre the the dance committee could afford to hire for such a prestigious event as this._

"_What?" Jeff yelled back, glancing at me over his date's shoulder as he danced against her. His yelling in her ear seemed to have no effect whatsoever on her. I wondered if she was deaf. Hadn't we done an exchange program with a school for deaf kids last year?_

"_Amy! Where did she go?" I repeated, straining my voice once more to be heard over Miss Perry's belting vocals. _

_Jeff frowned, craning his neck to scan the crowd. "I, uh—Oh!"_

_I glanced in the direction that Jeff's head was pointed. "What? Can you—"A glint of red—Amy's hair—flashed in the corner of my vision. I could just barely see her through the mass of bodies and the pulsing light display. "Nevermind, man. I see her!"_

_In hindsight, I definitely heard Jeff call after me—something like, "Nick, wait!"—but I'd already begun pushing my way closer to the center of the crowd of bodies, towards Amy and her bright red hair. By the time I got to her, the song had changed into something louder, something, somehow, dirtier, with a pounding bass line and a fast beat._

_The first thing I registered was Amy. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I noted how weird it was that her hair looked almost purple under the blue lights. Second to register in my mind was that she did not seem to be in need of a dance partner—or a date, quite frankly; she had her tongue shoved down the throat of another Dalton student, one who, in my opinion, was popular for no reason it seemed other than the size of his biceps and his complete lack of respect for any kind of authority figure._

_I stopped in my tracks. Several thoughts raced through my head all at once, most of which included violent action being taken upon the jerk who'd stolen my date. Being that I generally elect to avoid being pummeled by people twice my size, however, I felt my feet take me back the way I'd came, the realization that she'd simply used me as a ticket to the dance sinking in._

_I brushed past Jeff and his date. He reached out his hand to my shoulder, but I ignored him, shaking it off. I returned to the table we'd claimed as our own and left our things at—our tux jackets, the girls' purses—and, with a huff, collapsed in a seat._

_It was a full song later that Jeff finally appeared by my side, pulling out a chair for himself. _

"_I take it you saw, then?" he asked._

_I rolled my eyes. Leave it to Jeff to put it in such simple terms. "You could have at least warned me!" I spat, my words leaving a foul taste in my mouth._

"_It's not like I didn't try!"_

"_Bullshit, Jeff. You could have told me that she was making out with that gorilla!"_

_Jeff barked out a cynical laugh. "Like it wasn't already painfully obvious that something like this was going to happen. No offense, man, but you can be so ridiculously naïve sometimes."_

"_What the hell are you talking about?" I grumbled, crossing my arms with a huff. I glared up at him._

"_Well," he said, "first, we have the fact that she was flirting shamelessly with the waiter at the restaurant."_

"_She was not!"_

"_And _then_ she kept flirting with me throughout dinner!"_

"_She was being friendly!"_

"_She was using you, Nick!" Jeff replied, rolling his eyes. "I don't know why you're defending her. God, you're such an idiot for thinking that she was into you, you know that?"_

"_What the fu—"_

"_Oh my god," came the high-pitched voice of Jeff's date, interrupting me. Her big blue eyes were wide with surprise. "I, um, I just wanted to check my phone. I—I'll just go," she said quickly, grabbing with small purse off the table from in front of Jeff before darting off, bearing a striking resemblance to a blonde mouse._

_Jeff stared after in her in surprise.. Taking advantage of his silence, I charged on. "God forbid you just let me have one moment where I'm slightly higher than you in social standing, Jeff!"_

"_What are you talking about?"_

_This time, I laughed. "You're just pissed that I had the balls to ask someone popular to the dance and you didn't," I told him harshly, stabbing at his chest with my finger. There was a disconnect in my mind as to whether or not I was more pissed off at Amy or Jeff, although it appeared to be the latter of the two. "I know you're totally obsessed with the whole _popularity _thing, but did you really care _that_ much? I mean, it was one night, Jeff. Why couldn't you have let me be the cool one just once?"_

"_Really, Nick? That's what you really think this is about?" Jeff asked, his tone suddenly icy. His eyes were cold._

_I rolled my eyes. "I _know_ that's what this is about, okay?"_

"_You don't know anything," Jeff mumbled, rolling his eyes. He grabbed his tux jacket from the back of his chair, the expression in his face suddenly pained._

"_What the hell? Where are you going?"_

"_I'm leaving."_

"_God, I hate you!" I shouted after him. _

_Jeff turned around and, for a brief moment, looked as though he was about to say something before deciding against it. As much as he liked to put on the brave front, he was never the one to stay and confront his problems._

_The last I saw of him that night was the back of his head as he pushed through the main doors leading into ceremony hall, the colored lights reflecting off of the blondeness of his hair._

_I left the dance soon afterwards, despite Blaine's best efforts to get me to come dance with him and Kurt, and Trent's threats of broken arms if I didn't stop being "the biggest party-pooper Dalton had ever seen since the last time that Wes misplaced his gavel."_

_I assumed Amy would get the message that she ought to find an alternative mode of transportation home when she got back to the table and saw that everyone else's stuff was already gone, as I had offered to take Jeff's date home. I still didn't know her name._

_Because of the extended weekend, I had opted to stay at home rather than at the dorms, as had Jeff, under the impression that I would get more studying done if I didn't have to listen to Jeff humming along with his iPod every time he tried to do his math homework._

_I hung my tux jacket up in my closet, reminding myself to remember to have my mom wash it before the dance showed up; somehow, I'd spilled Diet Coke on the right lapel and, even though it couldn't really be seen, it had dried the material stiff and was starting to smell funny. The tux pants were tossed in the direction of the dirty clothes pile that was growing in the corner of my closet, while I opted for a more comfortable pair of basketball shorts._

_With a glance over at my clock—it was 11:38—I decided that I could still fit in some studying for Caluclus. A little integration would help clear my mind. Numbers certainly didn't leave you hanging at a school dance to go make out with a different, more impressive equation. _

_By the time I'd I started in on my third story problem, though, I heard a knock on my already door. I didn't even have the chance to respond before my mom came in, which was unusual for several reasons: one, it was kind of late, and my parents weren't exactly the "night owl" types, my mother less so than my father; two, my mom had her phone in a death grip; and three, my mom's eyes were red, like she'd been crying. She let out a sob, and I realized that tears were still leaking from her eyes._

"_What's wrong, Mom?" I asked._

"_Honey," she managed, "it's Jeff."_

_I rolled my eyes. I stood as though to go and hug her. Sometimes she got worked up over little things. One time, when Jeff and I had had as small fight over a song for Warblers solo auditions, she'd burst into my room, in tears, demanding that I be the one to apologize. "Mom, it's not a big deal," I told her. "We fight all the time. He'll get over it."_

"_Nick," she said slowly, measuring her words, "Jeff was in a car accident on his way home from the dance tonight. He's—"_

_My eyes widened. "What?" I felt my knees go weak. "Is he going to be okay?"_

_Everything seemed to slow down as I saw her shake her head. There was a disconnect between my eyes and my brain. I couldn't be seeing this._

"_Jeff didn't make it," she replied._

"_What?" I choked out, my vision blurring._

_I couldn't understand. I didn't want to understand._

"_Nick, honey. Jeff is dead."_


	2. The Reason

**A/N:** The song Nick sings is called "The Reason." Yes, I am evil and I like cliffhangers. If you enjoy it and can't wait for more, leave a review, because, I promise, there is definitely more coming (wow, that sounds ominous).

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><p>I glanced up at the clock yet another time before squeezing my eyes shut. Only 10:40? Really?<p>

This whole day seemed to drag on to infinity. I felt like I'd been awake since midnight and was running solely on a cup of decaf coffee, if that even makes sense. It seemed possible that I could just go on sitting here forever, glaring up at the clock and willing the arms to move, for this to be over.

Today was the day of Jeff's memorial service—his parents preferred the term over "funeral" because they wanted to celebrate his life, rather than grieve over him. Quite frankly, it didn't make any difference to me. Weren't they the same things? My best friend was still gone and, regardless of what his parents chose to call this little gathering, he wasn't coming back.

The whole service had been put together at the last minute, because Jeff's parents wanted to do it while their family was still in town for the holidays (or, rather, the entire month of December), and you can't really organize something like this very well on short notice.

I tried my best to focus on Jeff's brother, who was up on stage, telling a story about the time he had broken his ankle at dance class and Jeff had dropped everything he was doing—Warblers rehearsal, as it was—to pick him up and take him to the hospital, because he was just that kind of guy. Unfortunately, though, his brother, Grant, kept pacing back and forth, and my eyes lighted on the framed picture of Jeff they'd placed at the center of the stage.

It was a fairly recent photo, because his hair was longer than he usually allowed it to be, and he'd spent much of the past few weeks combing his hair in the mirror and lamenting about how badly he needed a haircut without actually going to get one. He was smiling—like he usually was—and that was just about all my brain could register. A hot tear leaked from the corner of my eye and fell down my cheek. I'd known it would happen, hence my previous attempts to avoid looking up at the front at all. Hell, I'd had trouble all week even just looking at his side of the room without wanting to throw my Calculus textbook at the wall.

Grant finished his story with a final teary-eyed smile and set the microphone down on the front table, next to Jeff's picture.

I'd known from the beginning, from that night that my mom appeared in my room and told me that Jeff had been in accident, that Jeff's parents would ask me to do this, so, with a heavy sigh, I stood and made my way to the stage, trying not to trip over my feet from nervousness. Thankfully, my family had been seated in the second row back from the stage, so the likelihood of me tripping over my feet was considerably less than if I'd been in the back.

Normally, like for Warblers performances, I didn't get nervous. Performing and being in front of an audience was natural to me, as it had been to Jeff, like it was to most of the other Warblers. I was that strange breed of human being that actually enjoyed class presentations, because I relished my time in front of people. But for the first time in a long time, I felt it deep down in the pit of my stomach: stage fright. It was like I could suddenly feel everything all at once—the heat from the lights, the weight of two hundred pairs of eyes focusing on me, the stiffness of my shirt. I felt the sudden urge to yell, "Just kidding!" and to disappear, pretending like this had never happened.

Despite all the effort I had exerted in avoiding looking at it, I was faced with Jeff's picture and, for several long seconds, I froze. Someone coughed out in the audience, whether accidentally or on purpose, bringing me back to the present moment. I picked up the microphone and, after staring blankly at it for what seemed like an eternity, I cleared my throat.

"Uh, hi, everyone," I started awkwardly, trying my best to make eye contact with only the back wall. Nervously, I shifted my weight from my left foot to my right, and back again. "In case we've never met before today: hello, my name is Nick, and I was lucky enough to be able to call Jeff my best friend.

"We met a couple years ago at Dalton, at Warblers auditions. We were freshman. To be honest, I'd hated him initially; he was tall, blonde, a great singer, and a fantastic dancer, whereas I was decidedly average height, brunette, a good singer, and competent only in swaying back and forth. Thankfully, we both made it in, and, at the end of the year, he asked if I'd like to be his roommate for the next year. I said yes. That was nearly two and a half years ago.

"Looking back, I can pinpoint the exact moment when I realized that Jeff and I were best friends: it was the end of sophomore year. We had just performed at Sectionals, only to come in third place out of the four groups that performed. I was convinced that I had single-handedly dragged the group down and caused us to place third with my, well, my lack of dancing skills. I'd spent much of the bus ride home whining about how terrible I was and how if I wasn't kicked out of the Warblers by next week, I would have to quit. As soon we had hopped off the bus—well, Jeff hopped, I had to be dragged—and made it back to our room, Jeff basically locked us in our dorm room and gave me a dance lesson that lasted for five hours. When we collapsed on our respective beds at three o'clock in the morning, I knew that he was more than 'that blonde Warbler kid' to me; he was my best friend, and he liked me for me.

"That was, I think, one of the greatest things about Jeff, actually. By being unafraid to be himself, he made it okay for you to be yourself, at least when you were with him. Sometimes, when we'd go on Dairy Queen runs at ten o'clock at night for ice cream, because Jeff would get these wild ice cream cravings, he'd just bust a move right there, in the middle of the lobby, and then invite me to sing along with the radio while we waited for his Oreo Brownie Earthquake sundae.

"I don't know how many people in here know, or if anyone even knows the whole story, but the night that Jeff died, we'd had a fight. It was stupid, and we both said some stupid things. As one of the last things I ever said to him, I'd shouted that I hated him, and then watched him storm out of the dance. We were both angry, but I'd assumed that we would be able to reconcile like we always did by the next morning. When my mom told me that night that he had been in an accident, everything like popularity and school just suddenly seemed so insignificant when compared to the fact that my best friend was gone and that I'd never be able to talk to him again. I'll never get the chance to tell him that I was sorry.

"Jeff's parents asked me to speak today, but I asked if, along with my speech, I could invite my fellow Warblers up here to perform a song with me. I've changed a few of the words in the lyrics, and, due to time restraints, the arrangement might not be quite up to par with our normal performance standards, but Jeff would always say that it didn't matter so much how complex and intricate your arrangement of a particular song was or how sharp your choreography was, so long as you had a reason to be up there on that stage that mattered to you, so long as you could make your audience feel something. I suppose this isn't something that would typically be sung at something like this, but it really summed up the way I felt about Jeff. I hope you'll enjoy this."

There was a long pause. "And I hope that, wherever he is, Jeff is watching," I added, finishing with as much of a smile as I could manage.

Even though I was still staring at some point at the back wall, I could see the Warblers, all of them dressed in their Dalton uniforms like we had agreed, rise from their various seats in the audience and file onstage. Trent, being the first to make it onstage, touched my arm and gave me a smile.

"That was amazing," he whispered in my ear, before he took his spot behind me for the song.

I heard Blaine quietly count off, and then the backing vocals began. He reached out to touch my shoulder gently. Well, it was now or nothing.

"_I'm not a perfect person_," I started, feeling a little bit off balance and awkward. I wasn't used to being in the spotlight, being the one with the solo. This was usually territory reserved for Blaine.

"_There's many things I wish I didn't do/But I continue learning/I never meant to say those things to you."_ My voice cracked just the slightest bit on that line; I felt sick, knowing that I could never apologize to Jeff ever again. God, this was all my fault.

"_And so I have to say before I go/That I just want you to know/I've found a reason for me/To change who I used to be/A reason to start over new/and the reason is you._

"_I'm sorry if I hurt you/It's something I will live with everyday/And all the pain I put you through/I wish that I could take it all away/To be the one who catches all your tears/That's why I need you to hear._

"_I've found a reason for me/To change who I used to be/A reason to start over new/and the reason is you/and the reason is you/and the reason is you/and the reason is you."_ Distantly, towards the back wall, I saw what looked like a flash of blonde hair. Jeff?

Squinting as inconspicuously as possible, I tried to focus on where I'd seen it, but there was nothing there anymore. Well, _if_ there'd been anything there. Had it been a trick of the lights? It must have been. I was seeing things, in the middle of a tribute performance to my dead best friend, no less. I bet this kind of thing never happened to Blaine.

"_I'm not a perfect person/I never meant to say those things to you/And so I have to say before I go/That I just need you to know/I've found a reason for me/To change who I used to be/A reason to start over new/and the reason is you._

"_I've found a reason to show/That side of me you liked the most/A reason for all that I do/And the reason is you."_

There was a long moment of silence before the audience gave their polite applause.

"Jeff," I said into my microphone, feeling compelled to say one last thing, "you will be missed."

As I returned back to my seat, my mom grabbed my knee reassuringly. "That was beautiful, honey."

I forced a smile as best I could, despite feeling like it hadn't been enough. "Thanks."

"Jeff would have loved it."

"Thanks," I mumbled again.

I thought back to the flash of blonde I'd thought I'd seen. Maybe it was Jeff's way of saying that he was sorry, too, from wherever he was. Or, of course, I could have been seeing things, having been partially blinded by the lights and all. I suppose that was the most likely option, because, you know, people don't just decide to be not dead in order to visit their glorified funeral services… Well, I mean, I personally wouldn't want to. It would just be too weird, what with everyone crying over you and telling all sorts of stories that you don't really remember about that one time that you did something and how much it meant to them.

The only other person I've ever known who had died was my grandpa on my dad's side, and I'd never really known him beyond the occasional birthday phone call and Christmas present that would arrive two weeks late. His funeral had been twice as long as it need to be, in my opinion. If I had been him and had chosen right then to be a ghost, walking in the back door and seeing everyone crying, I would have wanted to cry, too.

My mom would probably say that I don't deal with loss well. The past week was hell; quite honestly, it's a wonder even to me how I made it through classes at Dalton, although I'm pretty sure I bombed that big Calculus test, or how I even managed to sleep in my now suddenly empty dorm room at night. Or at all.

As Jeff's memorial service drew to a close with a final video and picture montage, I felt the sudden, overwhelming urge to stand up and leave. I wasn't entirely sure why, but I felt let down by all of this, like it should have somehow brought Jeff back to me or that it should have at least given me closure about that last night, and, instead, I was just more hurt, like this had made it more real.

Like I wouldn't be able to go home, sleep off this "mood," and then bust out my phone and call my best friend.

Like I would have to go back to Dalton again on Monday and have to stare at his empty side of the room in silence despite my best attempts to finish my schoolwork.

Like he wouldn't be there at our special Warblers table at lunch, waiting, like always, with a smile and some sort of funny comment.

Like I wouldn't show up to Warblers practice on Monday at four and be able to practice dancing with him afterwards.

Like I would never hear him laugh obnoxiously laugh at some sort of mumbled sarcastic comment Trent would make under his breath.

Like Jeff really was gone.

The video montage, played on an overly large projector screen, ended with a shot of Jeff that set me on the verge of tears. It wasn't anything particularly sentimental—I mean, in terms of pictures, it was particularly emotionally detached. It was this headshot of him, taken right before the beginning of last summer, because he was auditioning for this new dance company that required him to submit a portfolio.

I could remember helping him choose that shot from an album of over thirty on his laptop. We had sat on his bed for an hour, laughing and making jokes about the funny facial quirks he had. I think it was one of the only times he ever let me make fun of his face to his, well, face. I would have never guessed he was self-conscious about the fact that he thought he was baby-faced had it not been for that afternoon.

We'd finally decided on that particular one because it made him look less like a seventeen year-old, and more like nineteen—more like he was someone who could handle the lead male parts, rather than a tall, lanky teenager boy. It probably helped that he wasn't really smiling, because I'd made the mistake of jokingly telling him that he looked like he was thirteen when he smiled.

He'd been so happy the day that he got the call from the company's director telling him that he'd made it in—so happy, in fact, that he proceeded to grab my hands and spin with me around our dorm room like little kids would until I slipped on the rug and fell.

Snapped back to the present moment by my mother gently prodding at my shin with her foot, I realized that the service had ended several minutes earlier and that I really just been sitting there, looking up at that picture of Jeff, for probably far longer than it deemed normal. These little space-out moments seemed to be happening with increasing frequency.

"Nick," she whispered, "are you okay?"

I sighed. No. I probably wouldn't be, not for a long time, if ever.

"Yeah, sure. I'm fine, Mom."

For the duration of the trip home, I felt like I had been holding my breath and, back in the safe haven of my own room, I could let it out. My mom had asked that I leave my door cracked open so that I would hear when she called me down for lunch. Rolling my eyes, I begrudged her as much.

I stared up at the ceiling, laying on my back as I tried to remember what I needed to pack before I headed back up to the dorms tomorrow night.

Did I still have homework? I couldn't remember.

Did my uniform still need to be washed? I'd have to ask my mom to do that later.

Calculus homework? Completed, although I still needed to ask the teacher about a few questions I had with one particular problem.

Where was my sheet music for Warblers rehearsal? Who cares?

There was a knock on my door. Hadn't my mom said she was going to call me down? What was the purpose of my leaving the door open to be able to hear her from downstairs if she was just going to come up and knock on my door instead?

"Yeah, Mom?" I said, not bothering to move from the position I was in.

I heard a familiar laugh. "You know, of all the names you've ever called me, 'Mom' was certainly never one of them," came a voice that was most definitely not my mother's. I shot up like I was propelled by a rocket.

"Jeffie?" I whispered, my voice cracking.


	3. Seeing Things

**Disclaimer: **I still don't own _Next to Normal._ If I did, trust me, I wouldn't be writing fanfiction—I mean, what?**  
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**A/N:** Reviews. I need them to live/write. They are greatly appreciated. No. Really. You have no idea. I get the notification emails (in the middle of Starbucks, frequently) and have to fight back to urge to jump around like a twelve year old boy if I'm in public because it's _just so exciting.  
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><p><em>The first person at the scene of the accident was a single mother of two named Jennifer. <em>

_She generally worked the closing shift at Starbucks, but she'd gotten off work later than usual that night and hadn't had time to call her kids before she started driving home. It had occurred to her to call them while she was driving home, to let them know that she was on her way, but it was late and it was dark. _

_It had been cold that day, with a lot of rain. The rain had stopped once the sun had gone down, but the temperature had fallen well below freezing, turning what had been puddles in the potholes of the road during the waning daylight hours into tiny pockets of ice._

_Jennifer, thankfully, had the common sense and the restraint to keep herself from reaching for her cell phone, despite the fact that she knew she wouldn't be home in time to tuck her youngest child into bed. This was, she assured herself, all for the greater good. _

_Her usual babysitter hadn't been able to work today, but her son, the oldest child, had assured her that he and his younger sister would be fine. It was only a five hour shift. If they needed anything, they could call the neighbors._

_The road she found herself on at 10:24 that night was a long, lonely stretch of pavement, surrounded by a heavily wooded area. People sometimes liked to camp there during the late spring and summer months, and, although Jennifer had never had the time to take her kids camping, she promised herself that she would next summer. Maybe they would take a road trip somewhere out of state—somewhere by a lake, where they could go swimming in the afternoons. That is, if she could ever afford to take the time off._

_But it was December right now, she told herself. There was no use getting anyone's hopes up by planning trips that might not happen, and it was too late and too dark for her to be focused on anything other than the road unfolding itself in front of her and on avoiding the icy patches that glistened under the headlights from her car._

_Up on her left, she spotted a pair of red tail lights. She knew this road too well to assume that it was the fork in the road—in fact, it was a mile up ahead—and the lights were too far off from the road to even be considered close to the shoulder._

_Jennifer hesitated for a brief moment, traveling closer to the set of lights. Being that she was a single mother, she considered herself to be more cautious than was generally required. There was no man in her life to come charging in on a white horse to come and save the day if something unfortunate were to happen to her or her children. She couldn't afford to fall for a trap set by some scary group of men bent on kidnapping women—if not for her own sake, then for that of her children._

_From what she could see, it was a car, but, in the darkness, she could only see the back end. With a frown, she continued on past it. She was still late getting home. Her kids would be worried. _

_After a moment's deliberation, though, she pulled her car onto the shoulder of the road and turned around. Her headlights shone on the car when she pulled up behind it, illuminating everything so suddenly that, for a second, Jennifer forgot how to breathe._

_The back end of the car, a small black model, remained unscathed, while the front end was wrapped around the base of a sturdy tree._

_Shakily, she reached for her purse, to dig for her phone, keeping her eyes on the car in front of her. She left the shelter and heat of her car, stepping out onto the ground. It was icy from the water that had soaked in throughout the day, and from the subsequent freezing temperatures. As she approached the driver's side of the vehicle, she saw the glint of broken glass amongst the weeds that had sprouted up out of the ground, even in this cold season. It almost seemed to sparkle in the glare of her car's headlights, which gave off enough light to give her a good enough look into the driver's seat._

_Somehow, between the icy ground and the shattered glass, the scene less horrific and more mystical._

_The teenage boy in the seat was slumped over the steering wheel, his body contorted in a way that seemed impossible. His forehead was bloody and his blonde hair was stained a dark red. One of his arms hung limply at his side. The door had crumpled inward upon the crash. The airbag, it seemed, had not deployed. _

_It was not a pretty sight._

_Jennifer let out an audible gasp. There was a reason she had not gone to nursing school. _

_She tapped at the metal of door, looking in through the open window._

"_Hello?" she whispered._

_There was no answer._

"_Hello?" she repeated, her voice a little bit more frantic this time._

_Yet again, there was still silence._

_With shakier hands than before, she dialed 911._

"_911, what's your emergency?"_

"_There's been a car accident," she answered, her voice coming out louder than she'd expected it to. It sounded so sharp in the middle of the silence of the woods, frightening her. "There's a boy inside the car. I—I think he might be dead." _

_She was able to give the 911 operator the name of the road she was on before she felt herself beginning to tremble. It was still dark; it was still cold. Regardless, she waited by the door of her car, straining her ears for the sound of the sirens from the ambulance that the operator had promised was on its way. _

_It wasn't until she was recounting her story to a man in a police officer's uniform that she realized her oldest child would be waiting up for her, to make sure that she'd made it home safely. He was only eleven._

_The emergency personnel finally pulled the body from the wreckage of the vehicle, having wrenched the door completely away from the car's frame. _

_The blonde boy was pronounced dead. No attempts at revival were made._

_It was 10:46._

_By the time Jennifer made it home, it was nearly a quarter past eleven, and her eleven year old son, Brody, was perched on the arm of the sofa. As she walked in, he ran up to her, wrapping his arms around her waist and burying his face in the fabric of her shirt._

"_What's wrong, baby?" she cooed, stroking his hair._

"_I was so worried about you," he whispered, sniffling. There were times recently when he seemed so much older than he actually was._

"_I'm all right, honey. I'm here."_

* * *

><p><em>At 10:08 that night, the black car had hit a patch of ice and swerved off the room. For the next sixteen minutes, no one had driven down that road. Maybe, if someone had passed by earlier, the teenage boy might have made it to the hospital in time. <em>

_Maybe Jeff would have lived._

* * *

><p>I used to have this recurring nightmare that the world was ending; I would be, somehow, trapped in my house and the garage door would be slowly opening. Every inch further it opened was one less minute I had to try and save myself. Somehow, I knew that as soon as the door was all the way open, it would all be over and the world would be gone. I never made it to the end of that nightmare; I would always wake up just before the garage door opened completely. It had always seemed so real, so possible, in my ten year-old mind that I would lay in bed for what seemed like hours afterwards, planning out what I would do if it ever happened.<p>

He was all too real.

It was like the worst kind of nightmare, the kind where it all seems so real and plausible that you forget you're sleeping, and you wake up in a cold sweat, freaked out and thinking that all your secret fears really have come to pass.

He was at my door, leaning nonchalantly against the frame, smiling over at me. It was like he'd never left.

"Jeffie?" I whispered, my voice cracking.

"What do you think?" he asked, rolling his eyes. "Who else could I possibly be?"

In a moment, I was on my feet, hugging him so tightly that I thought I might never let go.

"God, I'd thought you were gone."

Jeff laughed, hugging me back for a long moment before pushing me off him. "You can be so sentimental sometimes, Nick," he told me, walking past. He stood in the center of my room, looking out the window.

"Oh, yeah. Definitely me," I replied, feeling the bite of sarcasm in my voice. It felt like it had been absent for so much longer than a week. "Aren't you the one who cries watching just about _any_ Disney movie? _The Lion King_? _The Fox and the Hound_?"

He turned back to me, crossing his arms the way he did when he was gearing up for a battle of the wits. "You cried when we saw the second to last Harry Potter movie over Thanksgiving break."

"Dobby died. Everyone in that theater with a heart was tearing up."

"I wasn't," Jeff retorted, a fair amount of bravado coloring his tone.

"Ergo, you do not have a heart," I told him, jokingly.

And then, suddenly, standing in the doorway to my room, looking over at my best friend, I froze, my eyes drifting away from Jeff's. It was like that old nightmare I used to have all over again—except, this time, I knew I couldn't be dreaming.  
>He was real.<p>

He had to be.

He was right here in front of me—talking, smiling, and making sarcastic remarks like he always had.

I'd hugged him; he'd felt real enough to me. He'd felt solid. He hadn't felt like something I had dreamed up. Then again, how would I know what a figment of my imagination would feel like?

Maybe this was what it felt like to go crazy, to recognize your total lack of sanity, and feel reality slowly slipping away from you, like sand through your fingers—there was no way to keep it from sneaking through the cracks and you were helpless to stop it.

"Dude," Jeff said with a laugh, "what's your problem?"

Slowly, my eyes met his. "What's going on, Jeff?" I asked, taking a tentative step forward.

"What?" He remained where he was.

"What's going on?" I repeated, slower this time, taking another step.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Jeff," I groaned. "You died. You're dead."

He smirked, glancing down at his body and then back up at me. "Funny. I seem alive enough."

"I went to your memorial service this afternoon!"

"_I'm alive I'm alive/I am so alive_," Jeff sang tauntingly, mimicking a tune from one of my favorite musicals, the one I always played on my laptop when I wanted to forget something.

"Jeff, stop it."  
>He grinned. There it was again, that mischievous look in his eyes that hinted at something more than what I could see. Or, well, what I thought I was seeing. "Stop what?" he challenged, raising his eyebrows.<p>

"You're not alive!"

"You currently seem to be the only one of that opinion."

"God! Just stop it!" I shouted, feeling the urge to throw my hands in the hands in exasperation. "Why are you here?"

The overwhelming silence that followed my outburst seemed to swallow every other sound. It was like a black hole, and there was nothing else but this. I glared at Jeff; he looked back at me, the look on his face pained, yet, beyond that, unreadable. The last time I'd seen him like this was that night at the dance—literally, the last time I'd seen him.

It seemed like that silence between us could have lasted forever.

The scuffing of a shoe against the wood flooring in the hallway snapped my mind back to reality.

"What are you?" I whispered, thinking aloud. Should I be afraid to meet his eyes?

"Do you really not have any idea?" he whispered in reply.

"Nick, honey," asked my mother, her voice coming from behind me, "are you all right?" I spun around quickly, seeing her worried eyes. "I heard you yelling. I didn't know if I—"

"Um. Yeah. I'm fine. I was just working on a scene for drama class," I lied, frowning.

"Are you sure? You sounding like you were yelling at someone," she told me. Her concern was written plainly all over her face.

"I'm fine."

She took a step towards me, putting her hand on my shoulder. "I know that sometimes, when you lose someone that you're close to, it's hard to come to terms with it, but if you ever need—"

"Mom, I'm fine," I repeated, this time more forcefully, like I was trying convince myself of it, too. "I was rehearsing a scene for drama class out loud. I'll try not to yell so loud next time."

My mom sighed, clearly disappointed. She was never the kind of person who was able to keep her feelings a secret from the world; they would always be clear as day, at least to me. "It's time for lunch," she finally said, giving me a small smile.

"I'll be down in a minute," I told her.

As soon as I'd heard her footsteps descending the stairs, I turned back around to face Jeff again, but he was already gone, seeming to have left in the same way that he'd appeared—how ever that was. I wasn't even entirely if he _had_ been there, or what it was that I'd seen.

I frowned.

Maybe I was just dreaming. Maybe this was just a nightmare and I'd wake up soon, before everything unraveled and the world ended.

But what if this was real, and the world was still unraveling just the same? What then?


	4. Phantom Limb

**A/N:** Reviews are lovely and wonderful and greatly appreciated.

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><p>It had been four days since I'd seen Jeff in my room and, quite frankly, I had been worried that he might make a second visit. So far, though, he'd been absent. Thankfully.<p>

It's not that I didn't miss my best friend every minute of every day, but he was gone. I felt as though I'd already said my goodbyes. What I'd seen in my room must have simply been the same thing I thought I'd seen at the memorial service—just my mind, playing a trick on me.

I sighed—loudly, judging by the looks I received from my Calculus teacher and the other Dalton students who were seated around me. With an apologetic look, I returned to my textbook, glancing down the page for the problems that had been assigned as homework before scribbling them out in my notebook.

Well into my sixth homework problem, I felt that strange, prickly sensation you get on the back of your neck when you can suddenly sense that someone is looking at you. I glanced up, meeting the eyes of the teacher, Mr. Hale.

"Mr. Duval," he said.

"Yes?"

"The guidance counselor requests your presence in his office," he told me in his overly formal manner, waving a note at me. Back in Dalton's early years, it was normal for teachers to speak in such a way; as of recent times, though, most had decided to forgo the practice. Mr. Hale, evidently, had not. He had, however, initially been a mathematics professor in England before he'd ended up at Dalton, and I've always felt like that must have something to do with it.

"Right now?"

"Your immediate presence seems to be required, yes," he replied.

"Could it possibly wait until I'm finished with this math problem?" I asked, wishing that this weren't happening in front of the entire class.

"Mr. Duval, please," Mr. Hale said slowly, enunciating each syllable in a manner vaguely reminiscent of Snape, from Harry Potter. "If you would kindly pack up your things and report to the guidance counselor's office, Mr. Abraham—" he gestured to the office attendant standing next to him, who had brought the note from the counselor requesting my presence, "—would be more than happy to escort you."

I frowned. "Yes, Mr. Hale." With yet another heavy sigh, I slid my notes between the pages of my Calculus textbook, before shoving everything else into my backpack.

As I passed his desk, Mr. Hale called my name.

"Yes?" I asked, turning back around. Everyone was, again, staring at me. Thad, another Warbler, caught my eye and gave me an apologetic smile.

He held out a hastily written hall pass to me. "You will be wanting this."

"Thank you," I mumbled in reply, praying that I wouldn't turn red with embarrassment.

As I followed the office attendant out of the classroom, it was like I could feel every single pair of eyes on my back, watching me with silent interest.

The halls were silent, save for the hollow echo of our footsteps. Mine sounded heavier, somehow, and rhythmically steady, while his were lighter and irregular—he would continually speed up, walking several steps ahead of me, before slowing back down to match my pace, only to speed back up again.

His footsteps had just begun slowing to match my pace when he spoke, breaking the silence. Instantly, I wished he hadn't.

"So, you knew that Warbler kid who died, right? Jake?" he asked. "The one who died in that car accident after the dance?"

I frowned. God, did everyone know? Of course they did. "Jeff," I corrected him.

"How'd you know him?"

Well, let's not beat around the bush or anything like that. "I was his roommate," I told him. _And best friend_, I added mentally. "We were friends."

"Man, that sucks. I'd hate to lose my roommate and have to find a new one," he said with laugh. "You have a good thing going with one person, and someone different could come along and just screw it up, you know?"

Mentally, I rolled my eyes. Yeah, because finding a new roommate is definitely my biggest worry right now. It certainly _wouldn't_ be the fact that I might or might not have hallucinated the other day and seen my dead best friend, who seemed alive and well.

"Yeah, totally, man."

"Like me and my roomma—"

As we walked into the lobby outside of the guidance counselor's office, the elderly secretary gave my chatty companion a stern look that sent him walking away very quickly. For that, I was grateful.

"Nick Duval?" she asked, peering at me over the top of her glasses.

"Yes?" I responded with a question, mostly because I was really beginning to question my being here in this office in general. Maybe I ought to just head back to my room. I mean, I really was feeling the start of a headache coming on. Lying down suddenly seemed like a viable option for my afternoon's activities.

"Mr. Henderson will see you now," she told me, the expression in her face never changing as she pointed me back through the door to his office.

I frowned, stumbling awkwardly over my own feet as I shut the door behind me.

The few times I'd previously been in the guidance counselor's office were more than enough to make me never want to return again. The first time I'd been called down, it had been for a string of missing assignments the week before the Warblers performed at Regionals my freshman year. It wasn't like me to not do my work, and Mr. Henderson felt that he ought to make sure I wasn't depressed or suicidal or anything like that. I'd told him that he ought to try taking multiple advanced courses with lots of assignments and projects, have Warblers' practice for most of the afternoon and evening, and still find time to do all _his _work. He frowned and sent me off with a reminder to complete my work on time and a "good luck" for Regionals.

The second time was last year, when someone had made a comment to the dorm supervisors about Jeff and me. We'd had a particularly nasty fight something over stupid—I know, shocker, right?—and there had been a lot of yelling. Mr. Henderson called me in to make sure that everything was okay and that we had no intentions of breaking any walls or bed frames or desks. He asked if I'd like to get a new roommate and I'd flat out said no, but thanks for the offer.

I was thankful that, this time around, I knew what he intended to talk about—Jeff.

Of course he would.

That's all anyone ever wanted to talk about lately.

"Mr. Duval," Mr. Henderson said with a smile, "please, have a seat." He gestured to the pair of armchairs that sat in front of his desk.  
>I tried my best—which, granted, wasn't very much—to give him a smile as I set my backpack on the floor next to the chair—it was, unfortunately, more of a grimace.<p>

"How have you been doing lately?" he asked. Mentally, I rolled my eyes—yes, of course, the question of the century. How _was_ I doing? What a loaded question.

I shrugged, trying my best to appear nonchalant. I didn't want to talk—not to him, not to anyone. "I'm fine."

"Really?" He frowned. "Because it's understandable if you're not. I know how it feels to suddenly lose someone you're close to and feel the desire to close yourself off from everyone around you."

Funny. Had I really lost Jeff? I mean, had he _really_ left? I wasn't entirely sure that he had.

"I appreciate your concern, Mr. Henderson," I told him, "but I'm fine. Really."

The counselor's frown increased, deepening the wrinkle lines in his forehead and on his face. "I'm sure that you may think that now, but it has the tendency to come out of nowhere like a speeding semi-truck and leave you reeling."

Gee, what a lovely choice of words.

"I haven't reached that point, sir, and I don't think I will. But if I do, I'm capable of dealing with it," I replied, trying my best not to meet his eyes. I was afraid of what he might find—not that he'd see that I was lying, but that he'd see that I couldn't find anything to grieve for.

He sighed, evidently seeing that the battle had been lost. "Well, if you need someone to talk to when it _does_ hit you, you know where my office is."

I nodded. "No offense intended, sir, but you're not exactly the first person I would go to if I ever needed someone to talk to."

"And who _would_ be?"

"Well, he's dead," I said, the statement coming out with less finality than I'd intended it to, and I felt as though I was telling only a half-truth. _Was he?_

Mr. Henderson's continued to frown and, in the silence that followed, he shuffled some papers around on his desk. I wasn't sure if he was looking for something specific or if he'd suddenly forgotten why I was there. Or even that I was there.

I'd just decided that I ought to make a timely escape and excuse myself when he spoke again.

"One last thing."

"Yes?" I responded, begging him mentally to just let me leave already.

"As you know, here at Dalton, many of the students appreciate having the ability to choose their own roommates. I'm sure you've wondered in the past week if you'll be given a new roommate. Because of Jeff's, er, death and the time of year, I've decided that it is not necessary for you to replace your roommate, if you so choose. In previous cases like yours, sometimes the grieving students opts to finish the year off without a roommate."

I frowned. "Oh."

"If you choose to remain by yourself, we may have to move you to a room with a single bed at the semester in order to accommodate possibly transfer students. But, if you _would_ like to have a new roommate, you can email me before the new quarter starts, so that we would possibly place you with a new student."

"I guess I'll have to think about it." Fat chance.

"Great. Be sure to let me know soon."

"Yeah."

"Well, if that's all there is to it," he said, shuffling around some papers once more, "I think we're done here."

"Awesome." The relief was evident in my voice. I grabbed my bag and was at the door in seconds.

"It was nice seeing you again, Nick," he told me.

"Yeah, thanks. You, too," I mumbled as I headed out the door.

Class was still in session but, for the first time in a very long time, I felt the urge to skip. Well, to skip class and go back to my room. Does skipping even count if you just go back to your dorm? I wouldn't know.

It wasn't even so much of an urge as I just had the feeling that I wouldn't want to go to my next class—or all the ones afterwards—and that maybe my time would be better spent today by listening to music and studying for Calculus.

And maybe studying for Calculus would have been a good idea if I hadn't been so hungry that I thought I'd eat the pie chart instead of analyzing it, or if I hadn't gotten tired and decided to take a nap instead. And maybe my nap would have actually happened if my Calculus book hadn't suddenly fallen from my desk right as I was falling asleep. The sound jolted me awake, like when you jump into a cold lake and you have that sudden rush of energy because adrenaline is pounding through your veins and you just feel _so alive_.

In a split second, I was able to process so many things at once.

It was strange, you know, because I usually left the book perfectly centered on my desk. Wind wouldn't have been able to knock it off, and, besides that, the window was closed. I mean, it was December, and I wasn't crazy enough to open the windows for a bit of fresh air.

And then it hit me.

That had always been Jeff's favorite thing to do—make some kind of loud noise to freak me out and then laugh while he waited for me to stop feeling the need to hit him.

Faster than I'd ever thought possible, I was up on my feet, eye to eye with him, my heart racing.

There was silence.

"What do you want, Jeff?" I whispered. The words were out of my mouth before I could even think.

He smirked, leaning back on his heels as he raked a hand through his hair. "What do you mean?"

"Why are you here?"

"Isn't this my room?" he asked, teasingly. "Don't I have every right to be here?"

With a grin, he sat down on what used to be his bed—was it still technically his bed?—and reclined, leaning against the wall with his legs hanging off the edge.

"Well?" he added after a moment, thinking he'd won.

"No. It's not, Jeff. You're not real. You're dead. This is my room now."

"See, you keep saying that," Jeff said, "but I'm here right now, talking to you, and you want to know what that says to _me_?"

"Enlighten me," I sighed.

"_That_ says to me that I _am_ alive. Dead people don't just walk around."

"Then do us both a favor and take your very alive self and leave our room," I told him, rolling my eyes.

"Or maybe I'm only here because you want me here."

"Excuse me?"

"Perhaps I'm only here because you want me here. Maybe, if you really wanted me to leave, I'd already be gone."

"What?" I frowned. No. This wasn't right.

"What part of that was poorly explained, Nick? Even _I_ understood that, and I've never been the smart one."

"But… No! Jeff, stop it! You're not real. You are dead."

"You don't really believe that, do you, Nick?" he asked, cocking an eyebrow. He met my eyes with a smug look.

I opened my mouth, with every intention of denying it, but I couldn't find the words to speak. I couldn't find the words to say that, yes, I really did believe he was dead because, let's face it, he was right there in front of me, and it's hard to refute something like that when it's right in front of you and talking to you and sitting on its old bed.

Jeff grinned. "I knew it."

"Shut up."

"It was written all over your face," he informed me, his smile widening. "It was really just a question of how long it would take for you to admit it to yourself, much less to me." I scowled. "Oh, come on. At least act like you're happy that I'm here. Your best friend isn't gone, Nick."

"What do you want from me?" I asked him with a defeated sigh.

Jeff held up his hands in front of him, like the universal "I mean you no harm" sign. "I told you. I wouldn't be here if you didn't want me to be here."

"So you're implying that I _want_ to be taunted by, well, whatever the hell you are?"

"I'd like to think that I don't really qualify as a ghost."

"Why not?"

"Because I can do this." With that, he jumped to his feet, kicking me rather hard in the shin and then sitting back down again. "See? If I wasn't real, there's no way I'd be able to do that."

"Shit, Jeff!" I shouted, grabbing my leg. Yeah, that had certainly felt real enough to leave a massive bruise. "What was that for?"

"To prove to you that I'm obviously not a ghost. Or anything you could have just imagined up."

I rolled my eyes. "Yes_. Obviously._ Thank you for the demonstration. I found it highly enlightening," I grumbled sarcastically. "You couldn't have just, like, moved some things around to prove that you're not a ghost, no."

"Didn't I already do that with the book?" he asked with grin.

"You had to go all the way and just kick me."

"I felt this required a special touch."

"And this 'special touch' was a soccer-style kick worthy of David Beckham. Thanks. I appreciate it."

"Anytime."

"No! Not any time! Never again!" I told him. "You shouldn't even be here. You're—"

"Not real. Yeah, I know. You've only said this about ten times. Look, Nick, I'm just saying that maybe I wouldn't be here if, somewhere deep down, you didn't feel any kind of regret about not being able to tell me something."

"What?" I frowned, forgetting about what was sure to be an incredibly impressive bruise tomorrow. "What are you talking about?"

"Figure it out."

"You haven't even—"

It was at that moment that there was a knock at the door. Jeff smiled.

"Nick?" came a voice from behind the closed door—Trent. "I know you're in there."

"Go away, Trent." I crossed my arms over my chest, glaring at Jeff. He continued to look back at me with that smug look again.

"I know you're skipping class."

"I said go away," I said, shooting an annoyed look at the door. When I glanced back, Jeff was no longer there on his bed—in fact, he was no longer in the room, as it would seem.

"I brought you lunch."

I sighed. "Fine. Come in. The door's not locked," I said, flopping down on my bed. It's not like I had anything to hide anymore, anyways.

As the door clicked shut behind him, Trent spoke. "Thad told me you'd left Calculus today to go to the guidance counselor's office today," he said carefully as he set a sandwich and apple, wrapped neatly in a napkin, on my desk—where my Calculus book had been, in fact, before it had, er, fallen on the floor.

"Technically," I corrected him, shaking a finger in the air, "I was called down. I got a note. It wasn't like I left because I wanted to."

"Still. And then you weren't in your next class—"

"I came back here to study for Calculus," I told him.

"I can see that so much studying has taken place," he replied sarcastically, shooting a pointed look at my textbook lying on the floor. I hadn't yet picked it up.

"Well, I _was_ studying. But then I got tired and decided to take a nap."

Trent muttered something under his breath, too quiet for me to hear, but I could see his lips moving.

"What was that?" I asked, sitting up.

He frowned. "It's hard to nap if you're yelling at things."

"I don't know what you're talking about," I lied, kicking myself mentally. He must have heard me shouting at Jeff for _actually_ kicking me.

Trent shuffled across the floor in his regulation black shoes and sat down next to me. "I can understand that you're missing Jeff right now, Nick. Maybe you don't even really know who you are without him here by your side," he said, "and maybe you don't really want to talk about it with me or any of the other Warblers or anyone else because you don't think they'd understand, but you're not the only one who's dealing with the loss either, and it's not healthy for you to bottle up your emotions and not talk to anyone." He paused, waiting, I think, for me to interject something, but I didn't.

"I heard you shouting a few minutes ago," he continued on, quietly this time. "I heard you say his name."

"Trent, trust me. That wasn't not what you think it was." I bit my lip self-consciously. In truth, it really wasn't.

"Look, Nick. You're not the only one dealing with this. You don't have to close yourself off from everyone else."

"I wasn't—" I managed to mumble before he cut me off.

"Not completely, no, but you're already putting up walls. You're not speaking up during Warblers rehearsals anymore, you're skipping classes to sit in your room by yourself—I don't even know if you meant to, but you probably would have missed lunch if I hadn't brought something by. You're not speaking to much of anyone anymore, and you just sulk around like you've got this dark cloud hanging over your head and it just won't leave you alone or something."

"Wow, Trent, I never knew you were this deep and poetic," I muttered.

"Nick, seriously," he scolded me sharply. "Everyone is worried about you. You could at least act like you care."

I stared at Jeff's bed, for lack of anywhere else to look, in sullen silence.

"Whatever. I'll tell the Council you were feeling sick if you don't show at rehearsal later." Trent stood and, for a moment, I thought I heard him scowl. He must have been really annoyed. "And your lunch is on your desk. Good luck with the Calculus, Nick."

"Thanks," I whispered, but he'd already shut the door behind himself.

There were a couple long minutes spent glaring at the sandwich with reproachful eyes before I finally decided that I was hungry enough to eat the food Trent had brought me. As I chewed, his words echoed in my ears.

"_Maybe you don't even really know who you are without him here by your side."_

He couldn't be right.

Surely I had an identity outside of my friendship with Jeff, right?

But the more I continued to think it through, the more I realized that I hadn't started to become the person I was today until I'd come to Dalton—until I'd met Jeff that day at Warblers auditions.

Knowing that, how _could_ I possibly be the same person I was before all this happened if Jeff wasn't really truly there to complete my personality?

It's stupid to think that another person could really "complete you," but I suppose Jeff's presence in my life for the past few years had made me a different person. I honestly didn't know how to be that version of me without him anymore.

Maybe it was like those stories you hear about those people who lose a limb in some kind of accident, but still sometimes feel a tingling sensation like it's there. Perhaps Jeff was that phantom limb, and my brain thought it was still there—_wanted _it to still be there—because it couldn't handle the only other possibility, which was that it really was gone and that it wouldn't, and couldn't, ever come back.

Truthfully, I wasn't entirely sure I could handle that either—but, then again, I wasn't entirely sure of anything anymore.


	5. Mistaken Identity

**A/N:** Sorry about the massive break since the last update. I somehow managed to have a life and worked on this at a much slower pace than I normally have. Hey, go leave a review anyways, because you're a quality human being like that!

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><p>The last time I'd been here, hurrying up the steps of the porch to the front door, seemed like it had been a lifetime ago—it had, in reality, probably just been a couple weeks—but, as I knocked on that red door, I felt different. Just off, somehow. Like, maybe I wasn't the same person I had been before and I had no right to be there now, with or without the box I had balancing on my arm.<p>

His mom came to the door after I knocked a second time. She looked like she'd aged several years in the span of the past few weeks. As she opened the door, I could see that, for a second, her face lit up with a smile, before it fell as recognition set in. I was, in all likelihood, nothing but a reminder of Jeff.

She tried her best to put on a welcoming smile, again, but I could see that it was forced.

"Nick," Jeff's mom said, her voice weary and tired. She'd probably been talking on the phone a lot lately—don't people call a lot after someone dies? "It's nice to see you."

"It's nice to see you, too, Mrs. Sterling," I told her, trying my best to give her a genuine smile.

There was a silence that followed, in which, I suppose, I was trying to figure out the best way to drop off a box of Jeff's old things quickly and get out of there without feeling compelled to say that, "Oh, hey, by the way, I've been seeing your son around lately, even though he died a couple weeks ago. Isn't that so weird? Has that happened to you yet?" In fact, I had been _this close_ to blurting it out to David when he'd stopped by my room the other day with sheet music for a new Warblers song arrangement.

"How have you been doing lately?" I asked awkwardly, immediately wishing I could take it back. I knew what the answer would be—it'd be a lie, covered by a generic "you know, I've been better," and wrapped with a tight smile.

"Oh, I suppose I'm doing the best I possibly could be, given the circumstances," she answered with an unsurprisingly tight smile. "Is there anything I can help you with?"

"Oh! Right." I nodded. "I brought by a couple of Jeff's things. You know, his laptop, some CDs—just some his more personal things that I thought you might want to have back. You hadn't been by the school at all and I just didn't feel right having his laptop sitting around because, you know, it's expensive and so, um, here." I finished my rambling and presented the box I'd been holding.

"Oh. Well. Is it heavy?"

I laughed, regretting that, too. The sound was too bright. "I guess."

"Would you mind carrying it up to Jeff and Grant's room for me? You can just leave it inside the door."

"Sure."

She opened the door wider—just wide enough for me to squeeze past her. Even as I walked by her, she flinched away.

I made it up the stairs to Jeff's room without tripping, although I hadn't anticipated Grant being home, let alone in his room.

For a split second, I thought I was seeing Jeff again. I'd almost dropped the box when I realized that it was just Grant, who, evidently, looked more like his older brother than I'd ever taken time to note.

Tall, blonde, tanned, lean—honestly, the only marked difference between them had generally been a differing of haircuts. Jeff's hair had always been straighter and sharper, whereas Grant, in the time that I'd known him, had had his hair both long and short, but he'd been growing it out after a particularly unfortunate encounter with a faux-hawk a couple months back. It had since grown out to the same length that Jeff had generally kept his at—how had I missed seeing that at the memorial service?—so he looked more like his older brother than ever.

There were a few long seconds where I was really only able to stare at him blankly, just inside the room, before he realized I was there. Quite frankly, I should have just set the box down and left.

I had caught my foot on something on the floor—although, it was likely that I managed to trip over the carpet—and stumbled forward, still holding the box, right before Grant turned around and gave a start.

Well, at least the feeling was mutual.

"Oh! Hey, Nick," he said, chuckling softly. "Sorry, I just wasn't expecting to see you here, like, ever again. You scared me!"

"Sorry! I would have knocked but…" I shook the box gently. As an afterthought, I set it down on the floor.

"What's that?" Grant asked, eyeing the box.

I gave it a light kick. "Just some of Jeff's things from the room…"

"That's not all of it, is it?" He frowned. "Because that's not a very big box…"

"No, no, definitely not. Jeff was such a pack rat. That's just, like, his laptop… And some of the CDs he kept in his desk. His dance shoes. A few books. I would have brought over just his laptop, but I figured that if I was bringing that over, I might as well bring some other stuff over, too, you know?"

Grant shrugged. "I guess. So is it weird being alone in that room now?"

"Kind of? I don't know. It hasn't really set in that he's, you know, gone," I replied. _It also doesn't help that he keeps showing up when I least expect him to,_ I added mentally.

"Yeah, I get what you mean, man. Jeff really only lived here on weekends, so it doesn't even feel like he's gone most of the time. I mean, honestly, he could still be living up at Dalton, you know?" Grant said with a laugh. I winced outwardly, hoping that it wasn't _that_ noticeable. "I don't know. Maybe it's just me, but sometimes I feel like he isn't really gone. Like he's still here, you know? Don't you ever feel that way?"

_More than you would think._ "Yeah, sometimes, I guess."

"Really?"

I frowned. "Sometimes I'll see a blonde guy walking in the hall at school and, from behind, he'll look just like Jeff, and, for a second, I can convince myself that this has all been some kind of a nightmare and that he's still here and then I look closer, and it's obviously not Jeff, because the hair is the wrong color or he doesn't even walk the same way.

"Sometimes, I could swear that he's still there in the room with me. I can put my music on, sit at my desk, and pretend it's just like before, and he's just across the room, sitting on his bed. Actually, to tell you the truth, I have—"

"Do you miss him?" he interrupted suddenly, looking up at me with the same big brown eyes that Jeff had had. For a long moment, it was disarming, and I lost my train of thought.

"W-what?" I stammered.

"You two were closer than he and I ever were. I mean, you two spent all your time together. You miss him, don't you?"

I frowned, feeling the need to look away from his eyes—it feel too much like I was talking to Jeff. "Yes," I whispered, a half-truth.

I wished it could be completely true. I wish I could say that, yes, I missed him every second of every minute of every hour of every day and I just wanted my best friend back because I didn't feel complete without him—but how could that be true if the last two times he'd just appeared—if he'd even _been_ real —I'd told him to leave? I was torn, I think, between truly wanting my best friend back and just wanting to go on with my life.

"I should, um, go," I said, clearing my throat. For some reason, it felt like the proper thing to do. Don't people always clear their throat when they need to excuse themselves from an awkward situation? Without even waiting for Grant's response, I dashed out of the room, down the stairs, and almost out the front door.

Just as I was reaching for the door knob, Jeff's mom called out after me. She was standing in the foyer, clutching the phone in her hand.

"Yes?" I said, holding my breath. I knew that she probably didn't want me here any longer and, quite frankly, I just needed to get out.

"Thank you for stopping by," she told me.

I nodded, giving her a smile, even though I knew she was glad to see me leaving. "Of course."

"Have a nice afternoon, Nick."

I couldn't help but think that that sounded more like a "Have a nice life, Nick, and please don't ever come back here again," than an "I hope you have a nice afternoon."

Or, perhaps, in addition to seeing things, I was also hearing things.

* * *

><p><em>The sun was just about to set. It cast a warm pinkish-gold glow on the lake and on the trees behind us as we sat on the beach. I kicked my feet out in front of me, digging my heels down into the sand, which was still warm from the heat of the afternoon.<em>

_It was nice just to sit back for once, to have the chance to take in something other than what home had to offer—which, frankly, wasn't much. I liked being able to get away from it all and go up to the family cabin._

_I'd always loved the sound of the lake—because, you know, there are sounds very specific to the lake—and feeling my feet sink into the sand when I walked. I believed that, somehow, the trees were greener here, too, and even the air just smelled different. It wasn't necessarily that it was even cleaner or fresher, but it was just… It tasted different._

_That cabin up in the mountains, just a few hours drive from our house, had always been my favorite place to go—in the summer, during the winter, as a weekend getaway. Once I was old enough to get my license, my parent's had even let me, with Wes and David's solemn oath to be the responsible ones, have a Warblers weekend up there._

_I'd always wanted to take a girl up there. Jeff would have laughed, but the romantic part of me loved to watch the sunsets. I was convinced that they were more beautiful up at the lake than anywhere else in the world. For the longest time, I'd thought the perfect way to spend the day with a girl would be to spend the day hiking around in the woods, watch the sun go down by the lake, and then go back to the cabin and make s'mores. _

_There was one time I'd come close to convincing my parents to let me and Jeff go up by ourselves over the summer, but they'd changed their minds right at the last minute. Jeff hadn't been too crushed—or, in retrospect, at all—but I'd spent that weekend up holed up in my room (or at Jeff's house), refusing to acknowledge my parent's existence._

_I couldn't quite remember how we'd gotten there that day—my memory seemed uncharacteristically hazy—but, for once, the details didn't really seem matter to me, and I reached out my hand, entwining my fingers with those of the blonde sitting next to me._

_I was happy._

_We watched the sunset in silence, trying to take in all the colors before they were gone—the reds, the orange, the gold, the purplish blue._

_When I finally spoke, all the colors had faded away into stars._

"_I had fun today," I said, smiling._

"_Me, too."_

"_Do you want to walk back to the cabin? We could throw in a movie or something and watch on the couch," I suggested._

"_I wouldn't mind sitting here for the a bit. You were right. I _do_ love the lake." The smile she gave me looked like sunshine—it _seemed _that bright._

"_I'm glad," I replied, feeling like my insides had been replaced with something warm and fuzzy._

"_I'm glad that you're glad," she told me, smiling mischievously. Her brown eyes, for a quick second, looked like they sparkled._

"_I'm glad that you're glad that I'm glad." I laughed and the blonde gave me a playful shove in the shoulder. Gently, I shoved back._

_Like it was the most natural transition, she reached out and grabbed my forearm, pulling me in to her. I closed my eyes, leaning in. Her lips hovered just an inch away from mine. There was a long second where the only sounds heard were those of our breathing and the small waves of the lake hitting the sand on the beach._

"_Well? What are you waiting for?" she asked. "Kiss me."_

_Except that it wasn't her voice. _

_It wasn't sweet and girly—but, for some reason, hearing it urge me to kiss her still sent a shiver up my spine._

_It wasn't even _her_ anymore._

_My eyes flew open._

_It was Jeff, suddenly so close to me._

_Without thinking, I closed the gap between us, my lips colliding with his. I let my eyes flutter shut as I leaned into him, cupping his face in my hands. He smiled through the kiss. _

_Gently, I pushed him backwards, into the sand—normally, he would have protested, I think, but, considering the force with which he kissed me back, I wasn't entirely sure that he minded._

_There was something that seemed so natural about the kiss. It was like all the awkward, tense, unpleasant kisses I'd ever had in my life had just meant that I'd been kissing all the wrong people—and that the _right_ person was Jeff._

_And then it crossed my mind—hey, what was I doing? This was _Jeff_, my best friend. This was weird. Why was I kissing him? Why was he kissing back? And why was I enjoying it?_

_I jumped back, scrambling to my feet—a difficult feat, given the sand—and took a few steps back._

"_What the hell, man?" I managed to squeak out, staring at him with wide eyes._

"_What's wrong?" Jeff asked, looking genuinely confused. "_You_ kissed _me_, Nick"_

"_I didn't kiss you at all!"_

"_I beg to differ."_

"_But—you weren't even there a minute ago! I was with a girl! Where did you come from?"_

"I am the one who's always been here_," he replied with a wink. _

_Cryptic _Next to Normal_ references be damned, I wanted a straight answer this time._

"_Stop it, Jeff! Tell me what's going on!" I shouted, resisting the urge to stomp my foot like a little kid would._

_Jeff merely smiled, taking his time getting to his feet. He sauntered up to me slowly, like the way a predatory cat would stalk its prey. He leaned in close to me._

"_Think about it," he whispered, stepping carefully around me._

"_Jeff!"_

"I am the one who knows you_," he hissed suddenly, his voice in my ear. I could feel his breath; it was hot on the back of my neck._

"_Jeff!" I repeated, my voice slowly rising in desperation. I couldn't even begin to explain why I suddenly felt so helpless. It was like having a panic attack, but I couldn't put my finger on what had triggered it,_

_He pulled back, grinning widely. "_I am the one who stayed_," he sang, "_I am the one and you walked away…_"_

"_Hey! _You're_ the one that walked away from me at the dance, not the other way around!" I tried to interject, confused, but he didn't appear to have noticed._

"I am the one who waited, and now you act like you just don't give a damn, like you never knew who I am…_" He prowled around me as he sang. I found that, strangely, I couldn't walk away—I was rooted to the spot. For whatever reason, I couldn't will my feet to move. Or did I even want that?_

"_Jeff, please." _

"I know you know who I am._"_

"_Jeff, please! Stop it!" I begged. "Just let me go."_

"I won't let go…_" he sang-whispered. _

_I squeezed my eyes shut tight, but his words still echoed in my ears. There was no way for me _not_ to hear._

"I am the one who loved you, you keep pretending that you don't give a damn, but you've always known who I am_," he sang. Distantly, I noted that it wasn't the exact lyrics as were in the musical version._

"_Please…"_

"I am the one who loved you…_" he whispered, the last word trailing off into nothing. Involuntarily, I flinched away, just barely able feel his lips on my ear._

"_What?" I asked, barely audible._

_And then there was silence._

"_What did you just say, Jeff?" I asked, this time a little bit louder._

_Silence. There was the sound of the lake, and nothing else._

"_Jeff?" My voice cracked. _

_I opened my eyes, finally, peering around—but Jeff was gone._

* * *

><p>I woke with a start, jolting upright in my bed. In my daze, I accidentally knocked something onto the floor—a picture frame? Maybe? My iPod? Whatever it was, it fell to the ground with a loud clatter, further waking me up.<p>

The clock informed me that it was three in the morning.

I could have sworn that I heard a soft chuckle from Jeff's side of the room but, even as I looked around frantically, I could see nothing. A glint of blonde out of the corner of my eye—maybe. I couldn't have imagined it, right? I mean, I certainly wasn't dreaming anymore.

"Jeff?" I whispered in the darkness.

There was nothing.

For the first time since Jeff's death, I truly felt that I was alone.

* * *

><p><strong>Final AN (meaning "_final_" as in last note for this chapter, not that I'm done here, because I'm clearly not, although, now that I think about it, I could totally end it here and there's a little bit of closure): **Yo, nothing N2N belongs to me (unfortunately) and I have used the lyrics liberally in the dream. It ain't mine. But, seriously, if you haven't yet, please, please, _please, _PLEASE go listen to "I Am the One (Reprise)" from _Next to Normal_, because that's what all the lyrics being quoted are from and the dream even ended up being like the scene in the musical, which was unintentional. Good job, me. Also, for the record, the most exciting thing to me is the people who randomly tweet me on Twitter (...obviously...) saying that they like my story because I get really excited. So you could do that, too.


	6. The Journal

**A/N: **I'm so sorry about the long wait for this one! December has just been a really crazy month for me—okay, it's all going to be pretty crazy for me from here on out—and then I had a massive case of writer's block and it was just plain unfortunate. Just a public service announcement for those of you who don't follow me on Tumblr (or Twitter!) I'm having jaw surgery on January and I'm not planning on being online for much of the two week recovery, which means no writing. I'll be on Vicodin, so I doubt anything I write will be worth reading anyways. I'm planning on trying to get the last chapter posted before the third of January, but if I randomly go on a long hiatus after this chapter, please forgive me. I've also already got an idea for another AU Hunger Games Niff fic—I'm going to try and post a teaser chapter before I'm gone, too.

* * *

><p>I sighed, letting the rain run down my face and dampen my hair.<p>

Warblers practice had been cancelled today—something about Wes and David both having big tests tomorrow and needing as much time as possible to study—so I had the afternoon to do as I pleased. As it was, I found myself standing outside in the rain, in my Dalton uniform, soaked through to the skin. To be honest, it wasn't that I'd gotten stuck outside in the rain; actually, I'd been sitting in my room, reading at my desk, when I glanced over at Jeff's empty bed, and then out my window and saw that it was raining.

Jeff had always loved the rain. It was funny because he was normally so obsessive about his hair and having it "just so." Sometimes people would jokingly muss it up, or some girl would try to touch it, and he would get mad—there was even one time that he yelled at Trent for messing it up when he accidentally brushed up against it walking behind Jeff in a row of chairs. But as soon as it started raining, Jeff was nowhere to be found—well, okay, that wasn't true. Jeff could _always_ be found wandering around outside somewhere, despite having better things to do, like homework or practicing his part for a new Warblers song. He'd come in after an hour or two, looking a bit like a puppy who'd just been given a bath. His hair would be plastered to his forehead and he'd leave his all of his wet clothes in a pile on the floor, where they would remain, every single time, until I shot him enough dirty looks to get him to at least move them into the bathroom and out of range for me to potentially slip on them.

For some reason, after each of those outings, Jeff would return to the room in a considerably better mood than he'd left. It was as if the rain calmed him down.

Maybe that's why I'd ended up out here. Perhaps, subconsciously, I'd thought that the rain might fix me, like it always had for Jeff—like it might make me feel like I was sane again.

Unfortunately, as I dragged myself up the stairwell to my room, my shoes making that horrible squelching noise with every step I took, I felt no different than I had before—considerably more water-logged, I would say, but no less confused and certainly less sane. I forced myself to take a hot shower—which was more for the purpose of warming myself than anything—before wrapping up in a blanket I'd found in a box under my desk and sat down on my bed.

It had been three days since I'd had that dream about Jeff at that cabin, and he'd been mysteriously absent ever since then—no random appearances while I was doing homework, no small, mysterious sounds from his side of the room, not even another dream.

I was stumped because, for the first time, I think I actually wanted Jeff to show up—hadn't he said that that was how it worked? That if, way deep down, I wanted to see him, he would just appear?—to ask him what that dream had meant, if he'd somehow had a hand in it from wherever the hell he was, and what _he_ had meant—why had he repeated that lyric a last time?

"_I am the one who loved you…_"

Even now, three days later, it still echoed in my ear, and, even now, I still flinched away from the imaginary sound, squeezing my eyes shut like it caused me some sort of physical pain.

I couldn't believe I was acting this way. It was stupid, it was irrational, it was useless, and, if anything, it would get me some one-on-one time with a psychiatrist, which obviously wasn't the plan here. Quite frankly, I wasn't entirely sure what the plan was to begin—I felt like that friend who always gets intentionally left out of planning the party, so they know that there's a something going on, but they don't know where or when or, for the most part, what's happening.

It sucked.

_I'm probably slowly losing my mind_, I thought to myself, _just sitting here on his bed. I bet no one even knows that anything is wrong. I bet no one else keeps seeing Jeff and, if they do, I bet he doesn't sing mildly cryptic lyrics to them or kick them in the shin._

Strangely enough, after Jeff had kicked me, my leg hadn't bruised, but I could still feel the dull ache of the pain, somewhere just below the skin.

_I bet he hates me. I bet that's why this happened. It's probably because we fought, and then he died before either of us could do anything about it. What if he died thinking about our fight? What if his last thoughts before he died were, "_What if I never get to tell Nick I'm sorry?_"_

Out of the blue, a different thought appeared in my head: _what if Jeff's last thought was, "_What if I never got to tell Nick that I loved him?_"_

There was a long moment of mental silence as I mulled that over in my head. What if he had? Was that what the Jeff in the dream had meant?

_Don't be ridiculous_, I told myself, laughing inwardly. _You never thought like this before he died. You never felt that way about Jeff, right?_

I was sure I hadn't. I liked girls! I had liked Amy—well, I mean, _before_ the incident at the dance. But I'd liked other girls! I'd had several girlfriends before. No one had ever lasted more than a month before I was overwhelmed with feeling like I was with the wrong person—but _still_. Jeff had, too—hadn't he?

The more I thought about it, though, I realized that he'd been single for a while. He definitely hadn't had a girlfriend in a couple years. There had been girls he'd said he thought were cute, but none of us Warblers had known them because they were "family friends" or "lived in a different town." None of us had ever met any of the girls Jeff had said he'd liked. There had been that girl that he'd taken to the dance, but, even then, I could have sworn I'd never met her before that in my life.

Perhaps I was just over thinking things—and didn't I still have homework to do?

* * *

><p><em>I'd come back to the room after class late. Since I had been sick the day before, I'd missed a test in Calculus and had had to take it after school, hurriedly scribbling down my answers so I could make it back to the dorm with a little bit of time to study for World History before Warblers practice at four.<em>

_I had been done much sooner with my test than I'd expected to be—in fact, I'd told Jeff not to expect to see me and that I would go to practice straight from the classroom—but a frightening encounter with a study guide in History class that morning had left me with the distinct impression that I ought to get some studying in, lest I fail the test in two days._

_My backpack was already off of my back and in my hands when I burst through the door, catching a glimpse of Jeff, wide-eyed, before he shoved something that looked like a notebook under his pillow. _

"_Hey, man," I said, distracted as I dug through my backpack for my World History notebook. Had I really left that in class again? Was this going to become a weekly thing?_

"_Hey…" Jeff mumbled. "Didn't you have to take your Calc test after school today?"_

_I nodded. "Yeah. But I finished early and I needed to study for History, so I hurried through it so I could come back and try and get _something_ done before practice."_

"_Oh…"_

"_I'd thought about texting you," I told him, "but it didn't occur to me until I was just outside the building, so you wouldn't have gotten it until, like, right now. I'll try and remember next time."_

_He gave a small laugh, sounding forced. "Yeah. I could have been napping or something. You know how I get when people wake me up!"_

_I laughed, because I knew _exactly_ what he was talking about. One time, as a joke on a Saturday morning—or, well, afternoon, seeing as how late we'd slept in—some of the Warbler guys had snuck into the room and jumped on our beds until we'd woken up. I had thought it was funny—it hadn't been a big deal, honestly—but Jeff had gotten angry and hadn't spoken to any of the guys for the rest of the day._

"_I suppose you're right. I'll try and remember next time, okay?"_

* * *

><p>I wasn't entirely sure why that memory had popped into my head just now. I had just been sitting on my bed, attempting to look over the notes that I'd taken in English class today on the rhetorical triangle, when, out of the blue, it occurred to me that maybe Jeff had kept a journal. Hadn't that been what he'd shoved under his pillow that day? I couldn't quite say for sure, because I hadn't been paying enough attention that day to actually see what it was, nor had it been particularly of note to me.<p>

Did he keep a journal? I couldn't imagine why he would. I thought we had been close—I'd told him everything—but, if I was right, we evidently hadn't been as close as I'd thought.

Maybe I ought to try and find it—it hadn't been in the box of things I'd already taken to his house, I knew that for sure—if only to clear up this nonsense going through my head about that repeated lyric from my dream _and_ to solve the mystery of all of the girls that Jeff had been interested in.

That day, he'd shoved it under his pillow, so, what the hell, that was the first place I checked.

Naturally, there was nothing.

Under his bed?

Nope.

I looked in his old backpack, in his desk drawers, in his dresser drawers, and in the drawers on his side of the bathroom (you never know!), but came up empty-handed.

_Think like Jeff_, I told myself. _Where would he have put it? Wouldn't he have put it near somewhere he spent most of his time?_

He generally did most of his work on his bed—I'd always assumed that he liked it because he was able to spread his things out in front of his more than he would if he had been at his desk. In fact, he spent most of his time on his bed. He was rarely at his desk.

I'd already checked under his bed, though. But maybe…

I flipped up the sheets by the headboard and lifted the mattress, peering underneath. _Bingo._

Just underneath the mattress, there was a battered looking notebook. It looked as though it had been hastily shoved into its hiding spot one too many times, because the front cover was creased down the center. Thinking back, I could remember several occasions when I'd seen him writing in it.

Tentatively, I picked it up, letting the mattress fall back in place. I held it out in front of me. It felt lighter than I'd expected.

Did I really want to read this? Did I really want to know what had Jeff thought?

After a moment's deliberation, I decided that, yes, I did want do this.

Without a second thought, I sat down on my bed, opened it to the first page, and started reading.

On the first page, Jeff had written:

"_I don't think anyone really knows who I am anymore. I don't think anyone knows me._"

There appeared to be a bunch of pages missing, having been ripped out. The perforated edges had been left behind on the metal spiral. Frowning, and intrigued, I flipped to the next page, finding a couple pages worth of stanzas, hastily scribbled in Jeff's writing.

"_I'm sorry._

_I'd never meant to keep this a secret from you._

_I thought it would pass_

_And that one day,_

_I would be able to stop hiding from you,_

_Or that maybe I would have no need to hide._

_I feel like I'm not me anymore._

_I don't know who I am right now,_

_I don't know my feelings,_

_And sometimes I can't control myself._

_I don't even know if it was recent or if I've known all along,_

_If I've always known and just tried to convince myself otherwise._

_You can understand that—_

_Can't you?_

_It never felt right to me._

_It was forced._

_I've been forced._

_Maybe you can imagine what that feels like:_

_To feel like you have to be someone different from who you are,_

_Something different from what you feel inside,_

_Pretend you love the things you can't bring yourself to like._

_The signs have always been there_

_And I suppose that, if you look hard enough for something,_

_If you want to see it—find it badly enough—_

_It will appear, plain as day._

_If you look at someone under a microscope, _

_You'll eventually find what you were looking for._

_I don't even know if this would make sense to you._

_You were always the better one—_

_The smarter one, the nicer one, the better looking friend._

_I'm sure it would be difficult for you to comprehend that the past year—_

_All the laughter and the smiles and the joking—it was painful for me._

_There was always an invisible line—a line I'm sure that you didn't even know existed—_

_That I had to be careful not to come near, let alone cross._

_I've never really cared about what other people think of me,_

_And maybe that's part of my charm,_

_But I guess I was always scared of what you thought of me:_

"_Was I too loud at rehearsal today? Did I embarrass him?_

_Do I snore in my sleep?_

_What if I step over the line and he finally bolts for the door?_

_What if he decides that he wants a new best friend, someone worthier of his time—_

_Someone worthier of _him_?_

_What if I were to tell him, and he would reject me?_

_I don't know if I could handle that."_

_There have been times I've been close to telling,_

_Just blurting it out to get it out there, in the open, so everyone would know—_

_If they didn't already—_

_But I was always afraid you might not understand,_

_That you might take it the wrong way, and_

_Poof! There goes our friendship._

_I wouldn't be able to handle that._

_So I hide it all—the feelings, the wanting, the needing—_

_And hope that one day,_

_You'll know and won't care._

_Maybe you'd say that you felt the same way, too,_

_And I would laugh, thinking of all the time that could have been saved_

_Had I just laid all the cards out on the table in front of you from day one._

_I'm sorry for feeling this way about you, Nick._

_I'm sorry that I've never been able to tell you._

_I'm sorry that you will never feel this way about me._

_I'm sorry for loving you._

—_Jeff._"

At the top of the page, a date had been scrawled—the day before the dance. The day before he died.

For a long moment, I could do nothing but stare at the pages, trying to remember to blink and breathe.

What? What had I just read?

This couldn't be right. This _couldn't_ be right.

There was nothing else written on the other pages. Everything else, save for the poem and that first page, had, it appeared, been ripped out, and Jeff hadn't written anything on the day he died. I wonder what he would have said if he had known that would be his last day.

I closed the notebook, setting it gingerly in front of me, just staring at it.

If this had meant what I thought it meant, then Jeff was gay.

"Jeff was gay?"

"My best friend had been gay, and he hadn't told me?"

"Of course he hadn't told me."

"He was scared to tell me."

"But he couldn't be, could he?"

"But he could."

"Was that why he'd been so weird about girls since last year?"

"Oh, god."

"That was what he was so mad about that night—rejection."

Thoughts swirled around in my brain so quickly, completely themselves before racing away, that I barely had time to acknowledge them before another one popped up and jumped around, begging for my attention.

I couldn't handle this, in part because I couldn't bring myself to look at our friendship in this new light and reexamine everything Jeff had ever said and done, looking for a second context, and partly because I didn't know if I could admit to myself that I _had_ noticed all along and just ignored it—or was it because I didn't know why I had felt something in that kiss in my dream that even I couldn't explain? I couldn't have imagined that feeling—the one that tells you when something is so right, even if you're too blind to see it.

Maybe I'd never realized that I had feelings for him, too.


	7. In Retrospect

**A/N: **Sorry about the long wait for this; I've actually had it written for the past two weeks, but I just couldn't bring myself to edit it. Everyone go send love to Melissa, my beta (for most of this), because I've been teasing her for the past month about the ending and she's probably about ready to die by now. Leave me a review and let me know what you think!

* * *

><p><em>The atmosphere in the room was tense—tenser than it really ought to have been. There were ten boys, most of them sitting rather stiffly in their new Dalton uniforms. It was the beginning of the year, and they were freshman—they'd yet to learn that uniforms weren't required on Saturdays, and that it was much easier to learn and execute the simple choreography taught at auditions when one were wearing, say, sweatpants and sneakers rather than trousers and shiny dress shoes.<em>

_ The brunette boy, much quieter and more timid than the others, sat in a chair in the corner of the room, giving an anxious-sounding laugh every time the taller blonde boy cracked a clever joke or said something witty, but more or less keeping to himself. The blonde sat in between two much louder—and much more obnoxious—boys, although they weren't nearly as funny as he was._

_ The brunette—whose name was Nick—remembered that, during the part of auditions where they'd learned the choreography, one of the council members had called the blonde Jeff. _

_Although he hadn't heard him sing, Nick was sure that the blonde was his biggest competition. Most of the other boys had been humming under their breath since the audition process began, but he hadn't heard the other boy so much as whistle since arriving. _

_The council members had been incredibly vague as to how many boys they'd be accepting this time around and Nick couldn't quite get past the sinking feeling that, if it came down to just one boy, they were bound to choose Jeff._

_After what seemed like an eternity—although the clock informed him that, in fact, it had been just shy of ten minutes—the three council members appeared. One of them was holding a gavel—in fact, now that Nick was thinking about it, he hadn't ever seen that particular Warbler ever put the gavel down. _

_The boy holding the gavel was the first to speak. "On behalf of the Warblers and the Warbler council, we would like to thank you all for taking the time out of your Saturdays to come and audition. Unfortunately, we can only accept a few of you—"_

"_Two, actually!" the shorter of the three, with dark hair, added. Nick felt his stomach drop—there was no way he was in._

_Gavel Boy paused for a moment and stared pointedly__at the other boy. "Yes—two. If we call your name, please follow us into the other room. If we do not, thank you for auditioning, and you are welcome to try out next year."_

"_And so, after much deliberation," the third boy—whom Nick remembered as David—said, "the two newest additions to the Warblers will be—" He paused and Nick thought he was going to be sick, "—Jeff Sterling and Nick Duval!"_

_Nick let out a sigh of relief, finally feeling __a__ smile spread across his face. At least if that Jeff boy was getting in, he was, too._

* * *

><p>"<em>So why don't you like me?"<em>

_The voice came from behind Nick, out of nowhere, and__Nick couldn't help cringe but just a little bit—it was Jeff._

"_What?" Nick replied, turning around, feeling the heat rise up in his face._

_ "Why don't you like me?" Jeff repeated, crossing his arms. _

_ Nick frowned. "I don't know what you mean," he mumbled, hurrying past the other boy quickly. He ought to get back to his room; he had studying to do—at least, that's what he kept telling himself._

_ Despite the fact that Nick thought he was giving off the "I don't want to talk to you" vibe, Jeff followed behind him, close on his heels._

_ "You're always avoiding me," the blonde told him, "and you __n__ever want to go over harmonies with me. You hardly ever talk to me, but we've never had a real conversation, so I don't understand why you're acting like you hate me, and—"_

_ "Okay, I get it," Nick interrupted, although he made no indication that he actually intended to answer._

_ "_Why_ don't you like me, Nick?" Jeff persisted. "We've hardly said ten words to each other! I want to know why!"_

_ The brunette boy shrugged. He was at a loss for words, mostly because he didn't really know either. He supposed he was just jealous—okay, _really_ jealous. He had been ever since Warbler auditions a few months earlier._

_ "I don't know," he grumbled, pushing the door of his room open and trying to close it quickly before Jeff could follow him inside, but the blonde pushed his way in, standing in the doorway._

_ "Just tell me what your problem is," Jeff argued, "and I'll leave you alone, okay? There's gotta be a reason!"_

_ Nick groaned, throwing his backpack on his bed. "I was jealous, okay?"_

_ "Jealous?" Jeff laughed. "Of what?"_

_ "I thought you were going to get into the Warblers and I wasn't, okay? I didn't—"_

_ "Wait, like, back at _auditions_?" he asked._

_ "Yeah…"_

_ Again, Jeff let out a laugh. "I thought _you_ were going to get in and _I_ wasn't. But I didn't randomly hate you for it."_

_ "Yeah, well, sorry," Nick replied with a shrug._

_ The blonde sighed, leaning back against the doorframe. "Can't we at least be friends?"_

_ "Why?"_

_ "Because I want to be your friend. Despite the fact that you won't even acknowledge my existence, I still think you're funny and, I don't know, cool."_

_ Nick frowned. "Fine."_

_ "Fine what?"_

_ "Fine, we can be friends," he told Jeff, keeping his back to the other boy. He tried to distract himself with his backpack._

_ "Try a little enthusiasm, at least," Jeff replied, grinning._

_ Nick rolled his eyes, stifling a groan, before turning around, a wide but obviously fake grin on his face. "Okay, let's be friends!"_

* * *

><p><em>The sun was just beginning to set when the Ferris wheel came to a sudden stop, with Nick and Jeff right at the top. The car swung back and forth as Jeff continued to lean forward, trying to see down to the ground, making Nick giggle nervously every time they suddenly dipped forward.<em>

_ "Jeff!" Nick exclaimed for what seemed like the tenth time since they'd stepped onto the ride. "Please stop!"_

_ Jeff grinned mischievously, looking over at his best friend. "Why should I?"_

_ "You know how scared I am of heights!" Nick told him, trying to keep the anxiousness out of his voice._

_ "Then tell me again why you're on the _Ferris wheel_, Nick," Jeff shot back with a laugh._

_ "Because my asshole of a best friend wanted to ride the tallest ride at the fair and, for some reason, I decided to humor him," Nick replied, glaring over at the blonde._

_ "Aww, I'm sorry. Poor baby," Jeff teased, rolling his eyes._

_ Nick shoved Jeff's arm. "Shut up."_

"_I'm sorry, does someone need a hug?" He laughed._

"_No."_

"_Yes."_

"_No!"_

"_Clearly you do," Jeff told Nick. "Come 'ere!"_

_The ensuing struggle within the small confines of the Ferris wheel car lasted all of ten seconds, finally ending with Jeff's arms wrapped around the brunette's shoulders, and, for a second, Jeff could almost forget that they would probably never be anything more than this. _

_Nick laughed. "Would you please let go of me? I can hardly breathe."_

_In truth, he couldn't, although not because of Jeff. For a moment there, he'd forgotten to breathe, because this just felt so _right_, so perfect, even though he couldn't quite seem to make sense of what was happening in his mind. _

_Jeff left one arm draped around Nick's shoulders as he settled back in the seat, feeling suddenly breathless. "D'ya think the ride is broken or something? We've been stuck up here a while," he said, just as the Ferris wheel suddenly lurched back into motion again._

"_I'm going with 'no.'"_

* * *

><p><em>It always seemed like it ended in more pain than it was worth. <em>

_There was always a girl, and Nick would fall for her, and, somehow, she would go about breaking his heart—whether or not it was an accident really didn't make a difference. It was always the same._

_ This time, her name had been Sarah. Thad's ex –girlfriend had introduced them and, without even really thinking about it, Nick had asked her out on a date. Two months after Nick had officially asked her to be his girlfriend, Thad had cornered him in the senior commons with some less than pleasant news—she had cheated on him at a party that weekend. _

_ Before Thad had even told Nick, he'd felt the need to ask Jeff how to approach Nick with the news—Jeff was Nick's best friend, so he would know the best way to break it to him, right?_

_ "I can't believe this is happening to me," Nick whined through his tears—Jeff was the only person he would let see him cry. "Once is bad enough, but _again_? What's wrong with me?"_

_ Feeling torn—he was both thoroughly annoyed with Thad for doing the opposite of what he'd suggested, and upset for his friend—Jeff rubbed Nick's shoulder wordlessly. He couldn't think of the right thing to say and figured that it would just be best not to say anything at all._

_ "I'm not good enough for anyone, am I?" Nick said. "I'm _never_ going to be good enough. I suck."_

_ Jeff frowned. Surely Nick didn't think that about himself._

_ "No, you don't," Jeff mumbled._

_ "Yes, I _do_," Nick replied, sniffling a little. "Have you seen me? It always ends up like this. God, I don't even know why I try anymore. I'm stupid and useless and untalented and a total pushover. Dammit, I don't even deserve to be loved."_

_ "What? No! Don't say that."_

_ "Why not?" Nick rolled his eyes, wiping tears angrily from the side of his face with the sleeve of his blazer. "It's the truth! The sooner I can accept that I am a piece of shit and that I don't deserve love, the sooner I can move on with my life."_

_ "Just shut up, okay?" Jeff told his best friend. Nick looked up at the blonde with wide eyes, looking more like a lost puppy than a teenage boy. "You're a know-it-all and a show-off, and sometimes you snore really loudly and you can be a total jerk, but you're still my best friend, and you're pretty goddamn awesome to me, okay? You're hilarious and smart __and you're a total catch, and why Sarah would ever give that up is totally beyond me. She's crazy for cheating on you."_

_ Nick's eyes moved to the floor. He blinked several times to get the tears out of his eyes. "Y-you think so?"_

_ "I know so. If you don't deserve to be loved, Nicky, then, sure as hell, none of us do, okay?" Jeff said, wrapping his arms around the brunette's shoulders and squeezing him tight. Despite his sadness, Nick felt the corners of his lips turning up into a smile as he leaned into the other boy's body._

_Maybe things were going to be okay._

* * *

><p>"<em>Aren't you coming down to dinner?" Jeff asked as he passed his best friend.<em>

_ Nick—who had been holed up in their shared room since the end of classes that day and was currently surrounded by an impossible amount of textbooks and notebooks at his desk—looked blankly up at the blonde door standing at the door. "Huh?" _

_ "Dinner?" Jeff repeated._

_ "But it's not dinner time yet!" Nick told him with a frown, looking at his watch. "It's only—oh. Dinner time."_

_ Laughing, Jeff nodded. "Yes. Dinner time. That _has_ been established. Are you coming?"_

_ Nick glanced down at his desk, covered in notes, and back up at Jeff. "I can't."_

_ "Why not?"_

_ "I have to study."_

_ "_Right_, like I'm going to believe that. 'Nick is failing a class,' what bullshit," he said with another laugh. "You don't fail classes, Nicky. You ace them. _I'm_ the one who comes close to failing them, before you swoop in and save the day."_

_ "Yeah, well, tell that to my grade in Physics, okay? I'm failing, and if I fail the midterm tomorrow, I can't do Warblers next quarter."_

_ "Dude, you know it's not a rule or anything that you have to have perfect grades to participate in 'extra-curricular activities,'" Jeff replied, cocking his eyebrow._

_ "My mom won't let me."_

_ "Oh… Well, just tell her it's not a big deal or anything. Plenty of us have failed a class before," Jeff assured him. "Trent failed Psychology last year because he bombed the final, and Blaine bombed his History of Music final two years ago because he was crazy hung over from a party the night before. I'm pretty sure David and Thad have gotten an F before, too. It's not a big deal."_

_ "You clearly don't know my mom as well as you think you do," Nick told him, rolling his eyes._

_ "How did you even manage to fail a class anyways?"_

_ Nick frowned, tapping his pencil absently against a blank page of paper. "Well, you know how I was sick about a month ago? When they actually sent me home to be sick there?" Jeff nodded. "Well, that was the week the professor saw fit to assign two different projects, an essay, and a big test, and then, when I got back, he told me I couldn't make up any of the work because it was all based around stuff that happened _that week_ or something, which is completely ridiculous and then I didn't do so great on the test two weeks ago, and now I only have the midterm to bring my grade up and I just need to go over everything because it's all going to be on the test but there's so many equations and—"_

_ "You're rambling again."_

_ "Sorry. I just have a lot of studying I need to do tonight."_

_ Jeff sighed. "Fine. I'll see you in a bit."_

_ When Jeff finally did return from the dining hall an hour later, a cup of hot coffee in hand, he opened the door to find Nick asleep on his desk, his face resting on the open pages of his textbook. He was still clutching his pencil._

_ The blonde nudged his friend's shoulder until Nick jolted up, nearly knocking the coffee out of Jeff's hand and all over his head. _

_ "I brought this for you," Jeff said, setting the coffee down gingerly on the only uncovered patch of desk. "I thought you might need it. I was right, apparently."_

_ "I fell asleep," Nick mumbled sheepishly._

_ "Oh! And a sandwich, too." He left that on the (still blank) notebook page in front of Nick._

_ "You're the best."_

_ "Yeah, yeah. Tell me something I don't know."_

_ "How about I explain centrifugal and centripetal force to you? Would that qualify as 'something you don't know'?" Nick teased, unwrapping his dinner._

_ "I brought you food, Nicky. No need to be a _total_ jerk," Jeff replied, leaning back on his bed._

_ The two spent the rest of the night studying—well, Nick studied, and Jeff got to throw stale gummy bears at Nick's head when he got answers wrong. When they both finally fell asleep, it was late—or, rather, early—and Nick had his head resting on Jeff's chest._

_ It was all worth it that afternoon, when Nick came racing back to the room after his midterm. He threw his arms around the other boy's neck, grinning from ear to ear._

_ "Jeffy!" he exclaimed. "I passed! I passed!"_

_ Smiling, Jeff wrapped his arms around Nick's waist, jokingly lifting him off the floor for a few seconds. "That's great! I knew you would!"_

* * *

><p><em>Movie nights, for Nick and Jeff, entailed camping out on Nick's bed in the dorm, the two of them curled up under a blanket, with Nick's laptop—a present from his mom and dad for good grades—at their feet playing a movie.<em>

_ This time around, it was the third Harry Potter movie—Jeff's favorite, or so he claimed, although it was clear from the sounds coming from the blonde next to him that the boy was fast asleep, having drifted off sometime before the time turner scene but after the Shrieking Shack._

_ When he'd gotten back to school from dance practice—he danced at a studio outside of school and sometimes competed on weekends—Jeff had been so ridiculously tired, but he'd insisted on continuing with their plans for a movie night, even after Nick offered several times to cancel and just let his friend sleep. _

_Jeff had recently been unhappy with his studio and it was taking a toll on him. He hadn't been getting enough sleep__—__thanks to an insane combination of Warblers rehearsals, dance practice and homework—and he'd been up late the night before trying to finish an essay that had been sprung on him at the last minute._

_As much as Nick wanted to help, he didn't know what to say, and he figured that "I think that dance teacher of yours is a soul-sucking parasite" might be too forward. Instead, he just kept to himself, helping his friend in any way he could—for example, by cleaning up their dorm even when it wasn't his turn, or by not blasting his music after Jeff got back from dance practice, even though he _really _wanted to listen to Coldplay's latest album._

_ During the final scenes of the movie, Nick felt Jeff move closer to him and he glanced over at his friend—still asleep. When the blonde curled up against his side, leaning his head on Nick's shoulder, Nick smiled, leaving him there. Jeff was warm—it was…nice._

_ Even in the flickering light from his laptop, he could see the dark shadows under Jeff's eyes, and he decided not to wake him. When the movie finally ended, Nick closed the laptop with his foot—getting up surely have jostled the sleeping blonde and woken him—and eased it back a ways, towards the foot of his bed, so that he could stretch out without waking Jeff._

_ He yawned, glancing over at the clock. It wasn't even midnight yet._

_ With a contented sigh, Nick leaned his cheek against the top of Jeff's head, letting himself finally drift off, too._

* * *

><p>"<em>I take it you saw, then?" Jeff asked, pulling up a chair next to Nick.<em>

_Nick rolled his eyes. Leave it to Jeff to put it in such simple terms. "You could have at least warned me!" the brunette spat back at his friend._

"_It's not like I didn't try!"_

"_Bullshit, Jeff. You could have told me she was making out with that gorilla!"_

_Jeff barked out a cynical laugh. "Like it wasn't already painfully obvious that something like this was going to happen. No offense, man, but you can be so ridiculously naïve sometimes."_

"_What the hell are you talking about?" Nick grumbled, frowning. He crossed his arms with a huff, glaring at his friend._

"_Well," Jeff said, "first, we have the fact that she was flirting shamelessly with the waiter at the restaurant."_

"_She was not!" Nick cried._

"_And _then_ she kept flirting with me throughout dinner!"_

"_She was being friendly!"_

"_She was using you, Nick!" Jeff replied, rolling his eyes. How could he not see that? "I don't know why you're defending her. God, you're such an idiot for thinking that she was into you, you know that?"_

"_What the fu—"_

"_Oh my god," Jeff's date interrupted, her eyes wide. "I, um, I just wanted to check my phone. I—I'll just go," she told the two boys, quickly grabbing with small purse off the table from in front of her blonde date before darting off._

_Jeff stared after in her in surprise. Taking advantage of his silence, Nick spoke again, getting angrier and angrier as he continued. "God forbid you just let me have one moment where I'm slightly higher than you in social standing, Jeff!"_

"_What are you talking about?"_

_Nick laughed, rolling his eyes. "You're just pissed that I had the balls to ask someone popular to the dance and you didn't," he replied harshly, stabbing at Jeff's chest with a finger. "I know you're totally obsessed with the whole _popularity _thing, but did you really care _that_ much? I mean, it was one night, Jeff. Why couldn't you have let me be the cool one just once?"_

"_Really, Nick? That's what you really think this is about?" Jeff asked. His tone was suddenly icy, and his eyes were cold._

_"I _know_ that's what this is about, okay?"_

"_You don't know anything," Jeff mumbled, rolling his eyes. He grabbed his tux jacket from the back of his chair; his face looked suddenly pained._

"_What the hell? Where are you going?"_

"_I'm leaving."_

"_God, I hate you!" Nick shouted after him. _

_Jeff turned around, briefly, and, for a moment, he looked as though he was about to say something to his friend before he decided against it. The last Nick saw of him was the back of his head as he pushed through the main doors leading into ceremony hall, the colored lights reflecting off of the blondeness of his hair._

* * *

><p>I was out the front doors of Dalton and in my car before I could even process anything else. I just needed to drive. I needed to clear my head—I really just needed to get out of Dalton, out of my room—and maybe try and make sense of everything.<p>

This couldn't be right. I couldn't really love Jeff.

No.

No way.

Surely I wouldn't have realized this, would have felt something before just now, before finding out that he had always had feelings for me. God, how could I have been so stupid? How could I have missed that?

Hadn't there been signs? Had I really been so clueless to have missed them all along? I'd never thought of myself as being particularly oblivious, but, I suppose, no one ever really does until they _have_ missed something.

I felt the need to call him, if only to hear his voicemail and listen to his voice—god, I missed him—but I had tossed my phone onto the passenger seat and, seeing as how it was sitting so nicely on the floor, it must have bounced off of the seat.

I hadn't even realized there was snow on the ground—I hadn't seen the ice. In fact, the roads were much like they had been on the night of the winter formal; yesterday, it had rained and, overnight, the temperatures had dropped, turning all of the standing water into slick pockets of ice, hidden from view beneath powdery snow—more or less invisible. I should have seen it coming.

The fact that there was snow on the ground hadn't truly registered with me, and I hadn't seen any need to slow down. I was going faster than the speed limit normally was through this stretch, and it was just assumed that everyone knew you were supposed to drive at least _at_ the speed limit when there was snow on the ground.

I would call him; I'd listen to his voicemail. It'd be like he was never gone.

Keeping one hand on the wheel, I leaned over, reaching for my phone on the floor; it was just barely out of my reach. If I could just stretch a little further—got it!

I sat up quickly, realizing far too late that I should have never taken my eyes off the road, just as my front tire hit a stretch of black ice and I lost control of the car, skidding off the road. The car hit the railing, flipping over it, and rolling headfirst down into the ditch that the railing ought to have protected me from in the first place.

The impact from the car flipping sent my forehead into the steering wheel, and I struggled to keep my eyes open through the blood dripping down into my eyes before everything faded to black.

* * *

><p><em>Nick would never understand the way Jeff felt—the way he wished Nick would feel about him—and there was no way he could ever explain to him that he knew his best friend deserved better than all those stupid girls who didn't care about him. Nick deserved someone better than that—someone like <em>Jeff.

_Jeff didn't even realize he was driving in his car until he was halfway home speeding down the road—he couldn't remember walking through the parking lot or getting into his car. _

_He would call Nick—he would apologize. He would tell Nick the truth—the truth about him—and he would accept whatever his friend thought about him, even if it was bad, even if it wasn't what he wanted to hear. He would tell him everything. _

_Without thinking, he dug through his pocket for his phone and, just for a moment, he took his eyes off the road to dial in his best friend's phone number—he'd never had it in speed dial for some reason. Jeff was going too fast, and he didn't see the icy patches in the road._

_All it took was just that brief glance away from the road for the front tire to hit a patch of ice, sending Jeff's car spinning out off the road before he could even press the _Send _button._

_Jeff felt the full impact of his chest and forehead slamming into the steering wheel as the front end of his car smashed into a tree. The airbags never deployed._

_He struggled to keep his phone clutched in his hand._

I'm sorry, Nick, _was his last thought before he slipped into unconsciousness minutes later, before he finally slipped away. _I'm sorry I never told you.

* * *

><p><strong>AN**: This is _NOT_ the very end. There is a final chapter that I'm considerably to be more of an epilogue (it's only a couple pages) that I should have posted within the next few days. If it isn't up by next week, feel free to harass me on Tumblr and Twitter until I post it.


	8. Epilogue

**A/N: **Er. Sorry this took so long. I was just kind of scared to edit this. It feels so... final.

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><p>Slowly, I open my eyes and it's as though I am surrounded by a soft white light—no, wait. I am inside the light. In my mind, I sigh, because I know that's not quite right either.<p>

It feels as though I am sitting, but everything around me is made of this light. It seems to fade away a little—perhaps my eyes are just adjusting to it—before it is no longer noticeable to me, and I can see clearly where I am.

I am in an airport, but it is unlike an airport I have ever been in in my life. For starters, there is no one here besides me, and, when I look out the windows, there is nothing but the same golden white light I saw just a minute ago. It's like the sun, almost, but not so strong; it's almost soothing.

_How did I even get here?_ It's as though I can't remember anything before this point—in my mind, there is nothing but this strange airport.

I know there are only two directions for me—I can walk down the terminal, where I have the distinct feeling that nothing will ever hurt again, or I can walk back down the hall, back the direction that I would have taken here—although I am uncertain as to how I know this. Maybe it is instinctive. Maybe I just _know_.

The sound of footsteps echoing behind me catches my attention as I'm staring down the endless hallway and I turn back around.

It is Jeff, like the last time I saw him—the last time I can remember him being alive—but better.

He is happy—smiling, even—and he reaches out a hand to me. It seems to glow softly—like that white light is somehow embedded within his skin—and I look at it curiously.

His smile widens encouragingly. "Go ahead," he tells me. "Take it. Take my hand."

"But why?" I find myself saying . The words have slipped out of my mouth before I can even think clearly, before I can process this—before I can process Jeff's sudden presence.

It is not like the times before, in the weeks that followed his funeral, when he continually showed up and found me in my dreams or while I was in my room studying. He is different. He is… I don't know how to put it, honestly, other than that he is whole again.

"Don't you trust me?" he asks, the grin playing across his features.

"I'm sorry," I whisper, looking away from him.

"I know."

"Please, Jeff," I plead with him, "what's going on?"

His hand drops to his side and his smile falters for a split second. "Well, the way I see it," he replies, looking me right in the eye, "is that you have two options: you can come with me, or you can go back to where you came from. You know, wherever it was that you were before you got here."

"But I don't remember how I got here."

"You don't?"

I shake my head. "No."

"Not at all?"

I shrug. "I just know that thinking about it hurts, like I hit my head," I tell him. Jeff frowns but says nothing. "Wait, did I die? Am I dead, Jeff?"

He laughs. "No one who comes here is _really_ dead," he says with a smile. "You've got a choice."

"What?"

"Don't you remember? The only people who ever come to the airport are the ones whose lives are hanging by a thread back in the real world. Don't you see? You get the choice between going back, getting to live, and letting go, and, well, passing on."

And, suddenly, it comes flooding back—the accident and when I hit my head on the steering wheel, my feelings for him, how I kept seeing him after his death, his funeral… that last night at the Winter Formal. That last memory hits me like a blow to the chest, and I find that I am unable to breathe for a moment.

"But why would I go back?" I ask, confused, looking up and meeting his eyes.

"I'm sure that the pain will fade with time," is his reply. He looks away from me, but I can still see emotion coloring his features. He is, unsurprisingly, still an open book to me, even now.

"No," I say with a frown. "I mean, why would I go back to all of _that_ when I have you here now? Won't we be together if I go with you?"

"Yes." He looks at me sadly. "But I don't want you to give everything up for me, Nicky."

* * *

><p><em>The coroner's report reads that Nicholas Duval, 17 years and 8 months old, died from head trauma—bleeding within his brain, actually—after flipping his car into a ditch. The blood on the steering wheel and the shape of the head wound indicate that the death was accidental. <em>

_ The coroner is perplexed, however, during the autopsy. Despite all things, the head wound should not have been enough to kill the teenager before the ambulance arrived—the car behind him had seen it happen and had called 911 immediately. They were only minutes out from the hospital, and he ought to have lived beyond the few minutes it took to arrive and remove his body from his wreck of a car._

_ There were no other life-threatening injuries—although he had a broken arm and leg—and no other explanation for his death other than he just seemed to have lost the will to hang onto life._

* * *

><p>It feels as though my heart leaps into my throat—now is the moment of truth—when he calls me by my nickname, the one I would only ever let him call me. "I don't have anything without you," I tell him. "Jeff, I love you, too."<p>

He lets out a sigh, like he's been holding his breath this whole time, breaking into a smile that literally lights up his face. "I love you, too, Nicky."

I grab his hand, pulling him towards me. "I'm sorry it took me so long."

Jeff laughs. "Don't worry. We have forever."

As he pulls me further into the airport terminal, the floor begins to fade away and the light around me warms. This is all I want. Jeff, I think, is all I have ever wanted.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: **The end. The _actual _end. Let me know what you think!


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